The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

35 Fresh Blood

SHE HARDLY RECOGNIZED the place. It was like some unfinished centre for asylum seekers: cavernous and hollow, echoing with alienation and confusion. Displaced people wandering around, clusters of coppers in uniform and crime-scene technos in coveralls like flimsy snowsuits.

Merrily saw Ben Foley standing near the foot of the baronial stairs with a youngish guy in black-framed glasses and an older man in a suit. Foley had his hands behind his back, hair swept back from his long face, lips compressed. He looked defiant, which suggested that he was deeply worried. Amber Foley came past with a tray of coffees, her hair white under the chandelier.

‘Lovely!’ A policeman taking the tray. Amber didn’t notice Merrily; Amber was keeping busy. But when the copper carried the tray away, Merrily spotted Jane.

There was this lopsided Christmas tree with wan, white lights, and the kid was standing next to it, a video camera dangling from a strap around her neck, as though this was all she possessed. She looked like some stranded backpacker whose passport had been stolen on her first trip abroad.

Merrily was about to go to her when DS Mumford faded up like the house detective in some drab old film noir.

‘Mrs Watkins. How’re you?’

‘Bewildered, Andy.’ If Mumford was here, it suggested Bliss was running the event, therefore care was needed.

‘Remarkable how quick you made it, considering the conditions.’

‘Gomer’s good at snow. And I’m afraid you take risks when you’re worried.’

‘Gomer, eh?’

‘He heard about it from Danny Thomas. Word travels fast in the Radnor Valley. So I thought that with Jane’s involvement, I’d better...’

No need at all to tell Mumford that Jane had managed to ring Lol, and Lol had phoned her at The Nant... which would have meant explaining how she and Gomer had come to be at The Nant and... like Jeremy Berrows didn’t have enough problems.

There had been fire engines and police Land Rovers at the rocks when they’d got here. Warblers and blue beacons in the snow, the son et lumière of violent death. Gomer had dropped her by the porch, gone to park the truck.

‘Andy, I think I’d better have a word with Jane.’

‘Well, the boss has just sent for her,’ Mumford said. ‘He might be amenable to you going in. Seventeen now, isn’t that right?’

The last legal umbilical slashed – Jane was old enough to be questioned by the police without a responsible adult in attendance. Merrily saw that the kid’s hair was pushed back behind her ears, like it had lost the ribbon. As usual in these extreme situations, she looked about nine.

The door marked lounge opened now, and a woman came out. Late fifties, well-managed white hair, sheepskin coat.

‘Thank you, Mrs Pollen.’ Frannie Bliss was holding the door for her. ‘We may need you again. Sleeping here tonight?’

‘I’ll be here, Inspector, but I can’t see any of us getting much sleep, can you?’

Bliss looked almost sympathetic for a moment. Then he spied Jane, and then Merrily about fifteen feet away. His small teeth glittered through the freckles. Where most police put on a severe front in the face of serious crime, Bliss rarely attempted to disguise extreme glee.

‘Little Jane Watkins. And her mum, valiantly battling through the snow in the old Volvo.’

‘Gomer’s truck, in fact,’ Merrily said, clasping Jane.

‘Mum—’ Jane’s lips against her ear. ‘Did Lol...?’

‘Gomer.’ Bliss grinned, like a young dog-fox casing a chicken run. ‘Of course. And me thinking God had parted the snowdrifts for you, like the Red Sea.’

‘A miracle in itself, Gomer Parry Plant Hire.’

‘He’ll do anything for you, won’t he, Merrily? Come through.’ Bliss stepped aside, holding the lounge door wide. ‘It’s not the Ritz, but, hey...’

‘You can handle hardship.’

‘The poor Durex-suits are out playing in the snow. They may be away some time, as someone once said. Dr Grace, the Home Office pathologist, is with them, moaning pitifully. What a night, eh?’

Merrily followed Jane into the lounge.

‘I do like this room,’ Bliss said. ‘Don’t you? It’s like, “I’ve called you all together here in the drawing room...” Who’s that old bugger over the fireplace?’

‘Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,’ Jane said tonelessly. ‘Ben uses this room for his mystery weekends, pretty much like you just said.’

‘Perceptive of me, Jane.’

A single fat log smouldered on a bed of ash in the grate below the blue-tinted blow-up of the great man’s face. Maybe it was the same picture as the one on the White Company’s Web site: Doyle in middle age, his eyes fixed on something the photographer couldn’t see.

‘Mr Foley kindly agreed to us having this as our incident room – for tonight, anyway. We’ll see he’s recompensed, we’re very good about things like that. It’s bloody cold, mind.’ Bliss went to peer at the fire. He was wearing an old blue fleece jacket over jeans.

‘The central heating will have gone off by now,’ Jane said. ‘They weren’t expecting so many late guests.’ She nodded at the fire. ‘All Ben’s logs are still green. He doesn’t know anything about wood-burning. It’s softwood, nicked out of the forestry.’

Bliss glanced back at Jane in curiosity. The kid’s face was expressionless-to-sullen. The boss no longer a hero, then. Bliss grabbed a poker, battering the solitary log in search of heat under there, and Merrily took the opportunity to whisper in Jane’s ear, ‘I came directly from home, OK?’

The kid nodded briefly, maybe brightening a little, possibly even grateful at being gathered into her mum’s confidence. Lol had briefly explained about the video camera, the proposed documentary. Go easy on her, eh? What would you have done at that age?

‘You know, Merrily...’ Bliss stood with his hands on his hips. ‘I realize you’re peripheral to all this – that this is Jane’s show – but when you’re present I always know that other angles I might’ve found a trifle, shall we say, puzzling... will be covered. Mrs Elizabeth Pollen, for instance. Now what on earth would that be about?’

‘Mrs Pollen’s a member of the White Company,’ Jane said.

Merrily said, ‘I don’t know Mrs Pollen personally, but the White Company seems to be a spiritualist group set up to continue the efforts of Arthur Conan Doyle to prove there’s life after death.’

‘Thank you. Do we need proof, Merrily, you and me?’ Bliss rubbed his hands together, kindling energy, and moved over to a mahogany writing table set up in the bay window. It had an unlit repro-Victorian oil lamp on it, with a green shade. There was a hard chair either side of the table. ‘No,’ he said, ‘we’re mates, let’s go and sit by the fire. Statement later, Jane. Just a cosy chat for now. You know me.’

They sat down, mother and daughter, on a sofa. And Merrily, who did know Bliss, too well, became wary, because Bliss didn’t do cosy. All she knew was that there’d been a fire up on the rocks and then a body found below. Found by Jane, this was the problem.

Merrily felt a draught on her ankles; she was still wearing Jane’s duffel coat, her fingers enfolded in the white woolly hat on her knees. Through the window, she could see someone trudging across the sludgy car park towards the porch: Gomer, back from learning what he could from some cop or a fireman; there was always somebody around who Gomer had known for years.

‘So,’ Bliss said. ‘What were you doing at the bottom of Stanner Rocks on a night like this, Jane?’

Jane shrugged. ‘We saw a fire on the rocks. I saw a fire. From the kitchen. Ben and Mrs Pollen went to check it out.’

‘Why you?’

‘Because...’ Jane sighed. ‘Because I was helping them to shoot a video, about Stanner Hall and... stuff. It looked kind of dramatic. And I had the camera with me.’

Merrily watched Jane. The kid had the camera on her lap. She was more subdued than Merrily had ever seen her in the presence of Bliss who, on other occasions, had brought out the worst in her. Merrily sensed a weight of suppressed evidence.

Bliss put his head on one side. ‘And did you get some nice piccies, Jane?’

‘Not really. The fire was more or less out by the time we got there. Because of the snow, I suppose.’

‘Right, then... tell me how you found what you found.’

‘Well, like I... got kind of separated from Ben and Mrs Pollen. Like, you stop to get a good shot of the skyline and stuff, and when you’ve finished they’ve gone. And then I saw a torch beam, and that turned out to be Mrs Pollen. Well, she found me. I like... I hadn’t got a torch and I fell. In the snow. And I suppose she heard me and...’

‘Nobody else about?’

‘Er... no. Not as far as I know.’

‘How long were you separated?’

‘Only a few minutes.’

‘And where was Mr Foley?’

‘He’d like... Mrs Pollen said he’d gone part-way up the path towards the van and saw it was burning out and nobody seemed to be in there. So he just went down to the road to wait for the fire brigade. Would’ve been easy for them to miss the turning, especially with all the snow.’

‘So just you and Mrs Pollen.’

‘She must’ve told you all this.’

‘Just you and Mrs Pollen. You saw nobody else.’

‘No.’

‘OK...’ Bliss leaned back. ‘I realize this is distressing, Jane, but what exactly did you see?’

Jane swallowed. ‘It was like... half-buried in the snow. There was a lot of blood. And it was...’ She looked up towards the cracked cornice around the ceiling. ‘Bits seemed to have been torn away. Bits of...’ Jane shuddered ‘... face. And... like, tissue. Strewn about.’

Merrily put a hand on Jane’s arm. ‘How long had it been there, Frannie?’

‘Foxes,’ Bliss said. ‘We figured foxes had been at it. Or badgers. Doesn’t take them long sometimes. ’Specially on a night like this, if there’s fresh blood.’

‘Do you know who it was yet?’

Bliss stretched his arms. ‘Well, as it happened, I could’ve identified him meself. Except even I wasn’t entirely sure, because, as Jane says, it was all a bit messy.’ He leaned forward, hands on his knees, looked at Jane and then at Merrily. ‘Reason I knew him is I’d had to give evidence a couple of times when he was on the bench.’

‘Oh?’ Jesus.

Bliss paused. He’d be wanting to see if either of them knew the name. Merrily said nothing.

Jane blew it, of course. ‘Dacre?’

‘Sebbie Three Farms, as he’s known,’ Bliss said. He leaned back again, beaming at Jane. ‘So where have you come across him? Not in court, obviously.’

‘Gomer,’ Merrily said quickly.

‘Gomer.’ Bliss beamed. ‘What a useful little feller he is.’

‘However, I don’t suppose Mr Dacre was actually killed by foxes avenging all their relatives,’ Merrily said, wanting a cigarette. ‘Did he fall from the rocks, or what?’

‘He almost certainly did... but whether it was accidental is open to debate. Would a local man, aware of the dangers, go for a stroll along Stanner Rocks in these conditions? If he was contemplating suicide, death would be far from a foregone conclusion – it’s not all that high, is it?’

‘Maybe he went up to see what the fire was?’ Jane said.

‘It’s a thought, Jane. Or did he start the fire? Or did he catch someone else starting the fire?’ Bliss stretched his arms luxuriously above his head, yawning pleasurably. ‘It’s a complete mystery, isn’t it, girls? I do love a mystery.’

Except that he didn’t. There was nothing, in Merrily’s experience, that real detectives hated more than a complete mystery.

Which meant that Bliss knew what he was looking for and that it was only a matter of time.

On the village square, the Christmas tree lights had gone out, and the security lamps outside the Black Swan were fogged and feeble, like the hopeless eyes of someone bound up tight in white bandage.

Standing by the landing window, Lol felt helpless. He was stranded.

Canon Jeavons had been most disturbed to hear Jane’s theory about Merrily and the Vaughan exorcism. A dangerously unpredictable situation. Give him some time to investigate this, think things out, and he’d be back.

In the meantime, Jane had called again.

The police are here now. Blue lights, I can see the blue lights out of the window. Or maybe more firemen. I’m up in my room. I’ve been sick again. I just ran straight up here to be sick in the toilet. Plus I didn’t want to talk to any of them. I don’t trust any of them. I want out of here. When you talk to Mum, just tell her... tell her I want to go home.

The phones went off in stereo, from upstairs and downstairs – bleeps and bells all over the vicarage, like the phones were crying out to each other. Lol ran down the stairs, through the hall, plucking the cordless from the kitchen wall.

‘Hope I’m in time, son,’ Lew Jeavons said. ‘You wanna make some notes?’

‘Hold on.’ Lol moved to the scullery door, shouldered it open. ‘I’ll go in the office.’

The scullery was lit solely by the orange bars of the electric fire. He moved to the desk. The lemon sleep-light on the computer was swelling like something medical. He found a pen, sat down.

Sprang up again. ‘Oh!’

‘You OK, Lol?’

‘Yes, I... Could I call you back?’

‘Sure.’

‘Right.’ Through the window, Lol could see the snow-slumped apple trees and the flattened face of Dexter Harris, his jug-spout lower lip squashed up against the glass. ‘Give me ten minutes.’

36 First Snow Casualty

WHEN JANE REALIZED how close she was to losing it, she backed away into the corner of the bedroom farthest from the window.

‘Mum, he couldn’t. He’s gentle, he’s entirely harmless. He’s the only farmer round here doesn’t even have a shotgun.’

‘Look, I don’t want it to be the truth either—’

Mum was sitting on the side of the bed, her face as grey as death. The two of them up here, with the lights out, exchanging information. Like spies, Jane thought, inside an enemy fortress. What she’d learned had, at first, just blown her away: the revelation that Natalie was the daughter of Hattie Chancery’s child. Natalie Craven was Hattie Chancery’s granddaughter.

That she was Sebbie Dacre’s cousin. Jeremy’s landlord.

And that she was in fact called... Brigid?

So it looks like she’s still doing it. They can’t stop. It’s a physical need. HOWARD. I have been dreaming about her for about 20 years. she still makes me swet. GAVIN

The implications would connect, at intervals, in a disjointed kind of way, and Jane would hug herself, the nylon parka crackling electrically.

‘We should go home. We know too much.’

Meaning she didn’t want to learn any more, not tonight, couldn’t handle it. But Mum didn’t want to go home. You could sense it in the way she was sitting – the duffel coat untoggled, hands on her thighs, resisting cigarettes only because it was such a small room and Jane was in it, too, and this was no night for opening the window. In some ways, Mum in the middle of something was no better than Bliss.

Avoiding the Foleys, Jane had brought her up two flights of stairs, along underlit passages, to this poky fridge, not imagining that things were going to get worse.

‘You’re a priest. You don’t have to tell Bliss anything. It’s like the sanctity of the Confessional. They can’t make you. Not even in a court of law.’

‘I don’t actually think that applies in this situation. Anyway, that’s not the point. God, it’s freezing in here, Jane. Has it always been like this?’

‘They can’t afford luxury accommodation for the servants.’

They’d been talking about the camper van. The one that Nat and Clancy had arrived in, like gypsies. The van in which, according to Mum, Nat was said to have been seen, with a man. At first, Jane had refused to believe it. Stood to reason that when someone as good-looking as Nat arrived in a place like this, women would resent her on sight. When she had the brass nerve to hook up with an unmarried local farmer, the gossip machine would be white-hot, and all gossip machines manufactured disinformation.

‘I’m sorry,’ Mum said irritably, ‘I wish I didn’t even have to think about any of this. He’s been in love with her for most of his life, even I could see that. Be nice to think love never had any negative side effects.’

‘He wouldn’t.’ Jane pressed herself into the corner in despair. ‘I don’t know him well but I know he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Clancy says he won’t even send stock to market, because they have to suffer in pens, so they go direct to the slaughterhouse. He’s an honourable farmer. He actually cares about living things.’

‘He tried to hang himself.’

‘That doesn’t prove anything.’

‘It poses questions.’ Mum stood up and went to the window. A row of white-capped conifers stood like a primitive rood-screen between the hotel grounds and the long, pale altar of Hergest Ridge. ‘And the other one is, where’s your friend Natalie?’

Jane said, ‘The last time I saw her, she was telling Ben she had to take Clancy to a neighbour’s because the track to The Nant was blocked. Which it obviously isn’t, so...’ Jane felt sick. Somebody was lying.

‘We know she took her to Danny Thomas’s, but where did she go then?’

‘All I know is she didn’t come back here.’

‘If she went to meet someone at the van—’

‘Dacre? You’re saying she was having sex with her cousin, right?’

‘I’m not saying anything, flower, except that Jeremy and Dacre are not exactly mates, and if Jeremy happened to catch Dacre at the van with Natalie, then you don’t know what might happen.’

‘But she knows, right, and that’s why she’s keeping out of the way?’ Jane felt her brain flailing around. ‘A lot of people hated Dacre.’

‘So it seems.’

‘OK, listen – suppose she’s having a thing with Ben? Don’t look like that, Amber thinks it could be happening. She was like... she said to me the other night, kind of throwaway, that Ben would... that he’d be better off married to Natalie. Maybe seeing if she got a reaction, seeing if I knew.’

‘Jane—’

‘If Ben and Nat did have something on the go, they couldn’t very well do it in the hotel, could they? And Ben was so anxious to be first on the scene of the fire. Without me there. Without video. Suppose he’d started it?’

‘Why would—?’

‘If I hadn’t been in the kitchen at the right time, nobody would’ve spotted that fire, so like no wonder he was mad at me. No wonder he wanted to get up there to make sure it was fully destroyed. Because... DNA? Whoever was with Nat, they’d have left DNA all over the van, wouldn’t they? Doesn’t fire destroy DNA? Like at Gomer’s depot?’

‘And Ben killed Dacre as well, did he?’

‘He nearly killed Dacre’s shooter!’ There was suddenly a hard sensation in the pit of Jane’s stomach. It felt like certainty.

Mum’s fingers were squeezing her knees. ‘We should... stop speculating.’

‘How do we do that, take sedatives? Like, Nat was even telling me she wouldn’t be surprised if Amber walked out on Ben.’

‘When?’

‘Earlier tonight. She wanted Amber to walk out, didn’t she? It’s blindingly obvious. And also when Antony – Antony Largo, the TV guy? – was eyeing up Nat, Ben was very quick to warn him off. He’s like, Keep your filthy paws off my house-manager, she’s in a relationship. Well, yeah: Smoothie Ben and Foxy Nat? You gonna tell Bliss or shall I?’

‘I don’t think either of us needs to tell Bliss anything. I think he knows something already. He’s too confident.’

‘He’s always like that.’

‘In front of you, maybe. I think we should wait to see what happens before interfering.’ Mum sat for a while on the edge of the bed, rocking backwards and forwards. ‘Wouldn’t mind another chat with Jeremy, though.’

‘That’s your way of not interfering?’

‘He talked to me before. He was still talking to me when Lol rang. Gomer and I said we’d come back and tell him what had happened.’ She stood up. ‘At least you’ll be safe here with half of Hereford CID on the premises. Just don’t... don’t be alone with Ben Foley. Or anyone else, for that matter.’

‘Am I stupid?’

‘Don’t tempt me.’ Mum wrapped her scarf around her neck.

‘Mum—’

‘Mmm?’

‘You’d better see this.’ Jane dug the Brigid Document from her jeans, opened it out and tossed it on the bed.

They found Gomer in his truck on the edge of the car park. He jumped down, a half-inch of glowing ciggy slotted into his front teeth like a red jewel. He extracted it.

‘Cops brought out the base of a paraffin lamp, vicar. Likely the oil was used to start the fire, somebody emptied it over some bedding, whatever’d burn easy. Made a pile of it, set it alight, buggered off.’

Somebody opened both doors of the hotel porch and yellow light splashed out into the slush. ‘Nothing left?’ Merrily said.

A man in white leggings came out of the porch, carrying a bulky leather holdall, and got into a police Range Rover with orange traffic markings.

‘Not much at all, vicar. Only Sebbie, and he en’t sayin’ a lot.’

‘Who did you get this from?’

‘Les Thomas, Danny’s cousin – one o’ the part-time fire boys. Les also says...’ Gomer lowered his voice. ‘Says the cops is runnin’ this big search for Natalie Craven.’

‘On what basis?’ Merrily asked.

‘Mrs Watkins...’ None of them had noticed Sergeant Mumford coming over; he moved quietly for a fat slob. ‘Boss can see you now.’ Mumford glanced at Jane. ‘On your own.’

Lol had found deep footprints across the snowy lawn: two sets of them. One coming, one going.

Dexter Harris had come in through the old gate from the orchard, walked across to the lighted scullery window, peered in and then returned the same way before Lol could get round there.

Maybe the sight of Lol through the window had been a disappointment. If he’d seen Merrily here, alone, would he have come to the door? It was a disturbing thought, and something even more disturbing occurred to Lol when he was back behind the computer.

How sure was he that it had, in fact, been Dexter? Hadn’t got a very good look at him in the kitchen earlier. Suppose, this had been the other one, Darrin? The bad guy. How alike the cousins were in appearance he had no idea, but he knew they were about the same age. The lower lip might have been exaggerated by being pressed against a wet window.

What must it be like here for Merrily now that Jane was away at weekends? For a house right at the heart of the village, it was surprising how isolated the vicarage seemed in conditions like these.

Something must be done.

Nothing, however, he could do tonight.

Lol sat down and rang Canon Jeavons back.

The lounge door was half-open and she could hear Bliss on the phone. He sounded irritated. ‘Yes, I will. I already had. I’ll ask her now.’

When he brought Merrily in, they sat this time at the table near the window, either side of the unlit Victorian oil lamp.

‘The Ice Maiden’s been called in,’ Bliss said. ‘Perfect night, eh?’

‘Annie Howe? Is she coming here?’

‘God forbid. No, she’s on another one. This, er... this is something and nothing, Merrily, but you might be able to help us.’

‘I heard you were looking quite seriously for Natalie Craven,’ Merrily said.

‘And where did you hear that?’

‘She works here, Frannie, where else would I hear it? And she seems to be missing.’

‘Yes, she is.’

‘And you’re looking for her.’

‘Yes, we are.’

‘And her daughter?’ Would he know about Clancy being at Danny Thomas’s?

‘Her, too,’ Bliss said.

‘And the van that was set on fire was originally Natalie’s, I believe.’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘You don’t want to talk about this, do you?’

‘No, I don’t. Unless you can tell me where she is.’

‘No, I can’t. However, I do get the feeling that you know a lot more about her than you’re saying.’

He leaned back. ‘Oh?’

‘Like that her real name’s not Natalie Craven.’

‘And what would her name be, Merrily?’

‘Brigid?’

She could tell by the absence of reaction that Bliss was very surprised.

‘You want to tell me about it?’ she said.

‘You little bugger,’ Bliss said. ‘Who else knows?’

‘Who else knows what?’

‘Right, Merrily,’ Bliss said, ‘we’ll deal with this. But first let’s get the other matter out of the way. Before Annie Howe arose from her coffin, I’d already heard from Melvyn at headquarters. The custody sergeant? Feller I consulted about your friend... forgotten the bugger’s name, now...?’

‘Dexter Harris.’

‘Dexter. And his cousin, Darrin. Not Harris, Hook. Darrin Hook.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Dead,’ Bliss said.

‘What?’ Full-beam headlights blasted the window. An engine was revving on the car park.

‘First snow casualty of the night. Run over by a van.’

‘Where?’

‘Ah,’ Bliss said, as Mumford came in.

‘Dr Grace, boss. Would like to see you.’

‘Send him in. Excuse me a minute, would you, Merrily, been waiting for this.’

Merrily was half out of her chair when Mumford said, ‘On site, boss.’

‘Bugger.’ Bliss stood up. ‘All right, tell him I’ll be there in five mins.’ He nodded at the lights outside the window. ‘For me?’

‘When you’re ready.’

Merrily put herself between Bliss and the door. ‘What is this, Frannie? What happened to Darrin Hook?’

‘Look, Merrily, I’ve just gorra— Can you—? All right, do you want to come with me? We can talk on the way.’

‘Well... OK.’ She stepped back and, pulling on her coat, followed him out into the lobby, where he was stopped by a lanky detective in red Gore-Tex.

‘This bloke Berrows, boss.’

‘You’ve talked to him?’

‘Not happy about him at all. Let us go through the house, no problem, but he’d got another guy there with him – Thomas – old hippy type, said he was on all-night snow-clearing. Said he’d been clearing Berrows’s track. Tractor outside, fair enough, but something didn’t feel right. Would’ve liked to bring him in, really...’

‘Not yet. Not while there’s a chance she might come home. You sure you checked all the buildings?’

‘I’m satisfied she’s not there, boss, but Mal and Ewan are watching the entrance, in case.’

‘As long as the bastards don’t fall asleep.’

‘They fall asleep in this, boss, they’ll never wake up.’

‘They’ll certainly wish they hadn’t,’ Bliss said. ‘Come along, Merrily.’

Outside, new snow was falling in a careless, disdainful way, like the contents of God’s shredder. The back door of a police Range Rover was hanging open. ‘After you,’ Bliss said.

She didn’t move, both boots in a cake of brown slush. ‘What happened to Darrin Hook?’

‘All right.’ He sighed. ‘What’s more interesting is where it happened. He was found on the A465 Hereford to Abergavenny road, halfway down the hill towards Allensmore.’ He glanced at her. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry—?’

‘The proximity of a bus shelter leads Melvyn to think we may be looking at the exact spot where Darrin’s little brother died. You coming?’

37 The Schizoid Border

THE LIGHTS FLICKERED again, the third time, and there was a crackle on the phone. In this area it was always the same with sudden heavy snow or any kind of extreme weather, including heat. The power lines and the phone lines were badly maintained, compared with the cities, and at some point they would go down and the centuries would drop away.

‘Black shuck, skriker, barguest, trash,’ Canon Jeavons said. It was like an incantation.

‘Regional names for the phantom black dog,’ Lol guessed.

‘You dealing with archetypes. Heavy tribal stuff. The twelve priests, the snuff-box... and, of course, the black dog... The black dog is known all over these islands, and he’s linked strongly to the landscape. He’s out there.’

The lights dipped again, the reduced wattage reducing colours, giving the scullery the appearance of an engraving. Static cackled in the phone. Lol looked across at the window, convinced that he could still see the smeary impression of a man’s face on the glass.

He was recalling Nick Drake’s song ‘Black-Eyed Dog’, about the personalized depression at the door that had haunted him to death.

‘Let’s talk about the black dog,’ Jeavons said. ‘What is he? The shadow of fate? And why a dog?’

‘Because a dog follows you?’

‘Haw! Correct. The black dog that follows a family through the generations. And is always out there.’

Nick Drake had sung of the black-eyed dog that knew his name. ‘Only, this one’s described as demonic,’ Lol said.

‘A word open to many interpretations. I would say they are... representative of a layer of existence that it would be unwise to trust. I believe these images exist, I believe we should accept that but never attempt to relate to them. For there can be no productive relationship.’

‘Unless you’re interested in knowing about the imminence of death,’ Lol said.

Bliss said to Merrily, ‘You don’t have to look.’

Sebbie Dacre’s body was in a canvas shelter isolated on an island of white in a choppy sea of slush. There was industrial noise, industrial light and exhaust fumes coming from three sides. Nothing was silent, except for Sebbie Dacre in his shelter and the ruched and fissured rock face behind it, feathered and tufted with fresh snow.

And she did have to look. Because Jane had. Because Jane had been the first, after the foxes and the badgers, to discover this. She had to know what Jane had seen.

Two arc lights lit the area, powered by a small, chattering generator. Bliss lifted the canvas flap.

‘Don’t throw up here.’

The dead man’s head sat on the corded collar of a withered old Barbour. His face, upturned to the ceiling of the shelter, was like the inside of a sliced tomato. The canvas also covered an ugly archipelago of blotchy things in the snow.

Enough. She turned away. Bliss let the flap fall.

‘From the second ring of tape up to the hedge, it’s all but useless,’ one of the Durex suits said. ‘Obviously, the fire brigade didn’t help, trampling all over the perimeter, dragging bloody hoses. That whole area, up to the hedge, that’s a complete write-off.’

‘You’ll get there, Jacko.’ Bliss turned to Merrily. ‘This is Jacko the Soco.’

‘He just likes saying that,’ Jacko said. ‘Francis, I’ve sent the first set of stills and the video down to the hotel. You have got a laptop over there? Hey up, here he is.’

A man with a beard came over, scraping back the hood of his coverall. ‘Francis, you little turd! Had a glorious long weekend planned, starting with me and my nursie tucked up by the fire with balloon glasses of Remy and a DVD of The Blair Witch Project.’

‘It’s a let-down, Billy,’ Bliss said. ‘You were spared a lot of disappointment. Go on, surprise me – give me a time of death to within two weeks.’

The pathologist unzipped his coverall and pulled out a Mars Bar. ‘Blood sugar comes first this time of night, matey.’

Merrily slid into the shadows. It was how they handled it – almost everything that didn’t involve young children. Like wartime, she supposed. Frannie Bliss and Dr Grace lived in a permanent war zone, littered with hard jokes and Mars wrappers.

There would be a similar scene at Allensmore, if more subdued.

It was a big van carrying carpets, Bliss had said, that ran over Darrin Hook. The driver said he hadn’t seen him. Which was understandable, as Darrin was already lying in the road amidst a lot of snow, his head two feet from the central white lines. In these conditions, with all the warnings and diversions, traffic was sparse, even on a main road.

Darrin had been sharing a rented flat with another bloke in a big former hotel near Wormelow, a few miles from where he was found dead. He might have been walking home or attempting to hitch-hike. There had been a half-empty bottle of Scotch in Darrin’s jacket pocket, and the body smelled strongly of alcohol.

‘Merrily, he was a scrote,’ Bliss had said in the Range Rover. ‘A toe-rag. A hopeless case. He got pissed, and disorientated. He fell into the road. Fellers like that, it happens to them all too frequently.’

‘At exactly the same spot his brother died?’

‘Life, Merrily, is full of accidental irony.’

‘He killed himself, didn’t he? He drank a lot of whisky and then he lay down in the road and waited for a lorry at exactly the same spot—’

‘As he doesn’t seem to have left a note, we may never know. But he’d been known to us for many years and appeared to have had connections with what we grandly refer to as the Hereford drug trade. So the Ice Maiden’s looking at this more closely and wondering if you might know of any reason why Darrin might have been the victim of an intentional hit-and-run – on the basis that the carpet-van driver was not the first to squash his innards. That’s the trouble with Melvyn – on a long night in the custody suite, he’ll talk to strange women.’

‘She’s ruling out suicide?’

‘Your theory’s unlikely to have occurred to her. Perhaps you should talk to her. Sorry about that.’

On the edge of the disused quarry, Merrily turned her face up to the spattering sky. Darrin Hook was dead, and the location of his death linked it firmly to another death, seventeen years ago. And the chances were that Darrin, whatever kind of human detritus he’d been, would still be alive if some meddling priest had not suggested digging the whole thing up again by holding a Requiem Eucharist for Roland Hook in a – get this – an attempt to cure his cousin Dexter’s asthma.

Healing and Deliverance: a creeping neo-medieval madness inside the collapsing ruins of the Church of England. She was feeling almost sick with self-disgust.

She wondered if Alice knew yet.

‘Give me that again,’ Bliss said to the pathologist.

‘I’m not saying it’s a fact,’ Dr Grace told him, ‘I’m saying it’s worth looking at. Won’t know a thing for certain till I get this chap back to the slab.’

‘But it’s probable, right?’

‘It’s possible.’ Grace looked up at the face of Stanner Rocks. ‘It’s a substantial drop, but it’s not exactly Beachy Head, is it? And he did fall into thickish snow. Now – and I believe one of your more athletic people has some of this on video from the top of the rocks – there were signs of disturbance. As if our friend tried desperately to clutch at outcrops and projections on his way down. Which would have slowed his descent considerably. Therefore – bottom line – broken bones likely, death far from inevitable. Could be he was awfully unlucky and his bonce bounced off a sharp rock at the bottom – you’ll have a better idea of that when we move him and they can have a good sift around. But it very well may not be. Extensive facial injuries, even allowing for scavengers. That’s as far I’m prepared to go.’

‘The alternative being that he was clobbered before he fell. That’s what you’re saying?’

‘I’m not saying. But bear it in mind.’

‘Oh, I will, I will.’ Bliss was already heading for the Range Rover, lifting a hand to the pathologist. ‘Nighty-night, Billy. Do a good one.’

Merrily was ringing Alice Meek on her mobile and not getting an answer.

It seemed to be some kind of guilt trip. Jeavons seemed to think that, having given Merrily some hasty and unreliable advice on the Harris/Hook issue, he had ground to make up.

He’d been researching intensively in his library and on the Internet, like it had become his responsibility to dispense wisdom on the Stanner case, details of which he’d gathered greedily from Lol. Family history, tribal traditions, race memories, curses – Jeavons’s primary area of operation. Now he was retired, he said, it gave him a buzz to work all night.

‘Does the black dog ever kill sheep?’ Lol asked. ‘Conan Doyle had his Hound ripping a man’s throat out.’

‘Seems unlikely, doesn’t it, if the black dog is just a walking portent? And yet livestock are often known to have been attacked in areas supposed to be haunted by them. We may wonder if living canines, from foxes to domestic dogs, might in some way be influenced by the proximity of such entities.’

‘Animals becoming possessed?’

‘Another difficult word. Perhaps. In a way. I like you, Lol, you don’t make light of such things, nor give the impression that you consider me to be mad and dangerous.’

‘Oh, you’re dangerous,’ Lol said. ‘But then, so are psychiatrists and psychotherapists.’

Jeavons did his haw haw laugh. ‘And we share jargon with these professions – no coincidence. They are the new shamans, the smoke-and-mirror profession. The necklace of skulls under the suits and the white coats.’

‘The twelve priests and the snuff-box,’ Lol said. ‘What’s your take on that?’

‘Archetypes, too, though less common than the black dog. The twelve priests represent the twelve apostles, and occasionally there may be mention of a thirteenth, the Man himself. This is widespread in folk-lore. And in fact the Vaughan exorcism itself is replicated further up the Welsh Border. At Hyssington, near Montgomery, we have a wicked squire who terrorized the area after his death. Like Vaughan, he appears in the local church as a bull. In this same church, the ubiquitous posse of parsons is waiting, with lighted candles. Like Vaughan, the squire gets reduced to something that can be accommodated in a snuffbox.’

‘So what’s that saying about the Welsh Border?’

‘Borders are psychic pipelines,’ Jeavons said. ‘What you have here is a river into which streams of belief flow, from both England and Wales. This is a particularly interesting part because of the way Wales and England seem to intermingle. The original boundary was the Dark Age earthwork, Offa’s Dyke, so how come we have an English town – Kington – which, according to my map, is on the Welsh side and a few miles away, a Welsh town – Presteigne – on the English side?’

‘Schizophrenic,’ Lol said.

‘You have it! The Schizoid Border. Hey, we cookin’ here, son. Consider the symptoms of the condition: delusion, hallucination... loss of identity, the withdrawal into a fantasy world.’

‘The landscape of the mind is more important than the outside world and it becomes impossible to distinguish between them.’

Lol thought about isolated communities caught between two cultures, emotionally, politically and linguistically. Never sure where they stood in big national conflicts – like the Wars of the Roses, in which Thomas Vaughan was involved on both sides at different times.

The Schizoid Border.

‘It’s all bollocks, of course,’ Lol said. ‘You can make anything fit into psychology. It’s why I packed it in and went back to writing little songs.’

But Jeavons wasn’t letting go.

‘Let’s take this a little further. Localization of archetypes, OK? The appearance of the spectral bull up at Hyssington is immediately put into a local context – Oh, it must be the ghost of old so-and-so, he was a bad-tempered guy, he must have turned into a bull when he died. But – hold on here – as recently as the 1980s, a ghostly bull is seen in Kington Church by a woman visiting the area... whose name happens to be Vaughan. An indication that such phenomena can actually become personalized.’

‘Yeah, but Thomas Vaughan doesn’t seem to have been evil or tyrannical. So what’s the evil that needs to be dealt with by this apostolic assembly of priests?’

‘Can’t tell you. The obvious target might be paganism, which I would guess survived in this area well beyond medieval times. The Christian Church lures the spirit of paganism into a holy place and relentlessly reads the scriptures at it until it becomes exhausted and shrivels into insignificance. It may simply be the spirit of paganism, or something more sinister...’

‘Tonight, you could get the feeling of something more sinister.’

Lol told Jeavons about the discovery of a man’s body at the foot of Stanner Rocks, torn about by some creature.

‘Who is this man?’ Jeavons said.

‘Unlikely to be a Vaughan. The family died out in that area.’

The lights dimmed again, with a clicking from somewhere in the hollows of the house, and there was another dragged-out crackling in the phone.

38 Big White Bird

‘I DO, JEREMY,’ Danny said. ‘I remember.’

They had mugs of tea, another fat ash log on the fire. Danny was sweating, inside and out.

Yes, he remembered that summer. Because it was the Oldfield summer, the summer after Hergest Ridge, the album, came out, and the Ridge was world-famous as the tourists arrived to see where the celebrated composer had flown his model gliders. Only by then, Mike Oldfield was either leaving Kington or had already left.

Bitter-sweet memories. Danny never did get to hang out with Mike in his studio; however, that same year he had managed to persuade the gorgeous Greta Morris to go out with him.

He sat now, in front of the range, watching Jeremy Berrows fizzing into some kind of paranoid life in the wake of that visit from the police. The bloody hugeness of this. It was gonner light up this valley like SAS flares. Sebbie Dacre. Sebbie Dacre. Dead. Killed.

Danny had taken the call when the bloke rang for the vicar, to say that her daughter had found a body at the rocks. The idea of it being Sebbie had never even occurred to him, and Danny thought about him and Jeremy trying to look normal when the police had told them. Cops hadn’t been fooled, he could tell.

And yet they’d gone. They’d looked around The Nant and they’d gone. They were looking for Natalie Craven and the child. He could’ve told them where the child was, but he’d held off. Didn’t want to tell nobody nothing right now.

Had it occurred to the cops that Jeremy might have killed Sebbie and Natalie, too? Had they thought of that? Because Danny sure bloody had.

The lie about the track being blocked so the kid couldn’t come home? The hurried note? The hanging, for God’s sake...

Danny hung on to his mug, letting solid old riffs plash and bang in his head to hold him halfway steady. Let him talk, let it come out.

‘We was only little kids that first holiday,’ Jeremy said.

‘I remember. Little blonde girl.’

‘Playing around the farm, walking down to Kington for ice lollies. We never had a fridge back then, the seventies.’

Danny looked over at the dresser. ‘That’s you and her, ennit, in that photo? Don’t recall seein’ it before.’

‘Always kept it in my bedroom. Kept it in a dark corner, so I couldn’t hardly see it proper, most of the time, but I didn’t want it to fade, see.’

Danny rubbed his beard. ‘Jeremy, I just never imagined. Mabbe because she was real blonde then, and now her’s dark.’

‘Blonde as ever was, underneath. Nobody expects a blonde to dye her hair dark, do they?’

‘Funny Greta don’t know ’bout that. Bloody hairdresser’s, that’s the intelligence centre of the whole valley.’

‘Does it herself. It was... the second time, see. The second holiday they had yere – that was when it really happened.’ Jeremy was fondling the dog’s ears, remembering. There was almost a smile on his face, over the ravages of the rope. ‘Brigid’s ole man, he was a nice enough feller. Quiet sorter bloke, but friendly. Wanting to know all about the farm, what this did, what that did. Tried to help with the shearing, made a bugger of it, but we told him he was doing well for a first-timer. Never talked about Paula. Brigid—’

Jeremy had to stop, tears in his eyes like broken glass. Danny remembered this time well: a damp, forlorn period, heralding the soulless eighties. Mike Oldfield had left the area for ever, and the world had already forgotten about Hergest Ridge.

‘We was only about twelve. Too young for – too young to do much about it, anyway, although...’ Jeremy flicked a sideways look at Danny, like, What am I doing, talking like this to a bloke? ‘We was in the ole barn this day, sheltering from the rain. Brigid was... you know how they get sometimes, girls, women: moody. En’t nothin’ in the world that’s right. No pleasin’ ’em, no talkin’ ’em out of it. So I suppose we kind of quarrelled, the way kids do.’

‘You... quarrel with somebody?’

‘Quarrel was with herself. Me as got hit, mind.’

‘Where?’

‘In the old barn.’

‘No, you fool—’

‘Oh. In the eye.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing. What could I do? What would I want to do?’

Danny nodded. Please, God, don’t let him have done this.

‘Next thing, her arms is round me and her’s sobbin’ away, up against me, all soft. And then we kissed, real gentle. First kiss, Danny.’ Jeremy looked up, flushed. ‘Her fell asleep in my arms. And then I suppose, eventually, I fell asleep, too. Woke up with a black eye. And in love. You know?’

Danny smiled.

‘Puppy love, my mam said. Be over it in no time at all.’

‘They don’t know, do they?’

‘When she left, I didn’t wanner live for a good while – you know how that is?’

Danny nodded. ’Course he knew.

‘Couldn’t sleep much, not for months. Used to creep out and spend whole nights, till dawn, out in the meadow with the ewes, then stagger off to school and fall asleep over the desk. Used to go up the church, times when there wasn’t nobody else there, and I’d pray to God to send her back. Pray to God, Danny. Had a special prayer I’d wrote down. Figured if I kept repeating it, every day, real sincere, he’d bring her back.’

‘God listen?’

‘Not till last summer.’

‘Bloody hell, Jeremy, poor ole Mary Morson never had a hope with you, did she?’

‘Nice girl, mind.’

‘Mary Morson?’

‘They all got their ways.’

‘Bugger me,’ Danny said faintly.

‘I wrote to Brigid, regular, she wrote back. Every week, more or less. The next summer I was thinking, they’ll be back. Lookin’ out for the caravan, you know?’ Jeremy shivered over the fire. ‘I remember, tried to phone her once. Got through to her dad. He said I couldn’t talk to her. Her sounded different – harsh, wound-up. Said never to ring again.’

‘And so you didn’t.’

‘How’d you know that?’

Danny sighed. Jeremy sank down in his chair, all the breath whispering out of him. The dog whimpered.

‘Some’ing yere I en’t getting,’ Danny said. ‘Why couldn’t you talk to her?’

‘Danny...’ Jeremy turned to him, full face, and Danny wasn’t sure which caused the boy the most agony, the twisting of his neck or the thought of what he was saying. ‘Some’ing happened...’

Danny had the feeling he ought to know, but he didn’t.

‘She was Brigid Parsons,’ Jeremy said. ‘That’s what happened.’

Back at Stanner, the cold air dropping around them like a shroud, Bliss said, ‘So how well do you know Natalie Craven?’

When Merrily had tried to raise the issue in the Range Rover, he’d nodded towards the driver and shaken his head, so she’d gone back to thinking about Alice, wondering if she ought to ring Lol, see if Alice had phoned. However Darrin Hook had died, it was going to damage Alice.

She followed Bliss into the porch. ‘Don’t know her at all. Jane’s at school with her daughter. Which is how Jane got the job here – Clancy invited her over one weekend, and the Foleys were looking for cheap Saturday labour.’

‘But you know who she is,’ Bliss said.

‘I know who she is... and I know...’ She cleared her throat, swallowed. ‘This is one of the things I was going to tell you in the Range Rover. We think – Jane and I think – that Natalie Craven may have taken the girl to Danny Thomas’s house for the night, because they thought the track to The Nant could be difficult. Danny’s the guy who was with Jeremy Berrows. He’s... Gomer’s partner.’

‘What?’

‘I’m sorry, Frannie. There was no reason to think—’

‘Where?’

‘It’s a farm. Back off the Kinnerton road from Walton. Not sure what it’s called, I—’

Bliss had surged into the lobby, leaving the door swinging back on her. Hell.

When she went in, the tall detective who’d been to The Nant to talk to Jeremy padded across the worn carpet.

‘Mrs Watkins, could you phone the chief, please, in Hereford?’

‘Annie Howe?’

‘Not a happy bunny tonight, the chief.’

‘Has she ever been a happy bunny?’

He grinned. ‘Use my mobile.’ He keyed in the number for her, and she sat down in a chintzy chair near the reception desk.

Annie Howe answered on the second ring.

‘Ms Watkins. The fourth emergency service.’

Howe was an atheist, younger than Bliss, seriously educated, promoted over his head and on course for the stratosphere. She wore crisp, white shirts and pencil skirts and rimless glasses and smelled, Jane would insist, of Dettol No. 5.

‘You wanted to, erm, talk about Darrin Hook?’

Merrily recalled the last time she and Howe had been together, in a derelict hopyard in the Frome Valley last summer, in circumstances that Howe was likely to have erased like a virus from the hard disk of her consciousness.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘I’d like you to tell me everything you know about the late Darrin Hook.’

‘Well, I... I only found out about him in a roundabout way – through his aunt, who lives in the village.’ No harm in going into this; whatever you thought about Annie Howe, she didn’t gossip. ‘She was worried about a rift in the family, stemming from the incident you obviously know about, seventeen years ago, when Darrin Hook’s young brother was killed. The other person in the stolen car, the cousin, Dexter, has suffered health problems ever since. Their aunt wanted me to... pray for him.’

‘Pray for him.’

‘I don’t expect you to identify with this, Annie, but it’s what we do.’

‘After you’ve made a few inquiries, to make sure that God has all the relevant background information necessary to deliberate the possibility of intercession. Even though, as I understand it, omniscience is one of his—’

‘Yeah, all right, you think my whole career has been founded on a tissue of myths. Fine. Strangely, I can live with that.’

‘It is strange,’ Howe said. ‘But then the most unexpected people can fall prey to superstition. Like Hook himself.’

‘I’m not following.’

‘Darrin Hook was released from Brompton Heath Prison just under three weeks ago, having served less than half his latest eighteen-month sentence for burglary. The decision was made on the recommendation of, among others, the prison chaplain.’

‘Oh?’

‘Because Hook appeared to have undergone a conversion to your... faith.’

‘Darrin Hook became a... Christian?’

‘You didn’t know that? Somehow, I’d expected that was how you came to be acquainted with him.’

‘I’m not acquainted with him. I’ve never met him. And I certainly didn’t know he’d been... When you say a conversion, what do you mean?’

‘The usual absurd fanaticism. Bibles appearing in his cell...’

‘Sent down from heaven?’

‘Brought in by a prison visitor. A relative. Hook began to attend the Sunday services, throwing up his arms and yelling that he’d been saved and praise the Lord and all this tosh. I think even the prison chaplain became bored with him after a while – perhaps why he recommended an early release.’

Merrily was shaking her head. ‘This is all news to me.’

The implications were startling. For a start, if this was true, Alice would have no reason to worry about Darrin’s reaction to the idea of a Requiem Eucharist for his brother.

‘You got this from the prison?’

‘We haven’t been in touch with the prison. The information came from a woman called Dionne Grindle, a cousin of Hook’s living in Solihull. We found her phone number in his wallet. She turned out to be the relative instrumental in his seeing the... light.’

My niece, the one in Solihull, she did one of them Alpha courses at her church, did I tell you?... Reckoned it d’creep up on you somehow... felt the Holy Spirit was in her heart like a big white bird...

‘She obviously didn’t tell the rest of the family,’ Merrily said.

‘Apparently, Hook specifically asked her to say nothing to the Hereford side of the family. He said that he wanted to tell them in his own time and in his own way. He also, according to Ms Grindle, had plans to – and this is what interests us, of course – make an entirely new beginning by setting the record straight on a number of dark areas in his past. Now I assumed that, by this, he meant coming clean about previous offences for which he was never caught. And we’d have been, naturally, delighted to help him with the paperwork.’

‘Wouldn’t you have had to charge him?’

‘Depends how serious they were. We can be fairly discreet, especially if it leads us to other offenders. And this, of course, is the point. If Hook had talked about his conversion and its implications, it might have been viewed as a rather worrying development by some of his former associates in this city’s criminal underclass. Especially if he was indicating to all and sundry that he might be ready to put the record straight on certain matters – come clean, as it were.’

‘You think he’d be a marked man?’

‘It does rather sound as if he was bent on martyrdom.’

‘Have you talked to his other relatives?’

‘Only his mother, who lives in the city and knew nothing of any conversion. She thought the most likely person for him to tell would be the aunt, who—’

‘So you did know about Alice.’

Howe didn’t reply.

‘Have you talked to her?’

‘No answer when we rang. She’s probably asleep by now. And we haven’t been out there simply because most of the roads in that area are now closed. Anyway, I thought I’d talk to you first, somehow imagining you’d be able to tell me rather more than you have.’

‘He really was killed?’

‘He was certainly killed. But if you’re asking if he was murdered, let me put it this way: there are some not-terribly-subtle textural differences between snow which has fallen naturally on to a body lying in the road and snow which has been kicked over it in order to conceal it from approaching vehicles.’

‘Somebody... dumped him in a main road? To be run over?’

‘Whether he was already dead, or unconscious, when he was placed in the road, only a PM can establish, so we won’t know until tomorrow.’

Merrily discovered that she was pacing the lobby, loose shadows meshing in her path.

‘Of course, the macabre aspect to this,’ Annie Howe said, ‘as one of our officers pointed out, is that Hook was placed in the road at the spot – or somewhere very close to the spot – where his brother died. Hook lived in a flat at Wormelow. A neighbour who was walking to the Tump Inn saw him leaving the building sometime around mid-evening, on foot. He may have been going to meet his killer and, unless this was a remarkable coincidence, we could assume the killer was someone who not only knew about the accident but also precisely where it took place.’

‘I...’ Merrily went back to the chintz-covered chair and sat down again. ‘His cousin Dexter was driving. Which you know, of course.’

‘Was Harris still close to his cousin?’

‘Apparently not. There’s been a rift in the family since the accident. We... I suggested the situation might be improved by holding a service – a Requiem Eucharist – for Roland, who was killed. Dexter said that Darrin would be dead against it. He suggested several times that Darrin was unstable... violent. He said, more or less, that he’d been scared of Darrin when they were kids. That Darrin liked to hurt people, cause trouble, had a cruel streak. I assumed, because Darrin had a prison record and Dexter didn’t, that this was at least close to the truth.’

There was a silence. The door of the lounge opened and Bliss looked out, saw that Merrily was still on the phone, scowled and went back in.

‘I’ll tell you about Darrin Hook, shall I?’ Annie Howe said. ‘Because I arrested him once, you see, a number of years ago. He’d got into a factory on the Holmer estate, with some mates, lifting some computers that they didn’t, of course, know how to get rid of – these particular models being part of a network system. So, when they tried to flog them to a nice chap who assembles PCs in his garage, we had the whole bunch in no time. Hook, it turned out, was the one who had got them into the factory, past quite an efficient security system. He’s not bright, but he’s remarkably good with his hands. And he does what he’s told. You might say, I want to get into a chemist’s shop, or I want a BMW Series 7, and Darrin will do the technical bits. You could call him an instinctive thief, a natural.’

‘He was the one who broke into the car that night. When he was about twelve.’

‘It’s what he does. What he did. It made him popular with certain people. Won him acceptance.’

‘Dexter indicated he was... you know... hard.’

‘Mrs Watkins, all his convictions relate to basic thieving, never involving violence – not on his part, anyway. It doesn’t surprise me at all that he was converted, in a very short time, to your religion. If he was exposed to someone with sufficient evangelical fervour, in a situation where he couldn’t get away, he’d be a pushover.’

‘Especially if he had something on his conscience?’

‘I don’t doubt that. You people are quite good at targeting someone’s weak points.’

‘You haven’t talked to Dexter, then.’

‘He wasn’t at home, and we haven’t tried to find him. It sounds as though he’s either easily scared or he’s been deliberately giving people the wrong impression about his cousin.’

‘He was doing the late shift at Alice’s fish and chip shop in Ledwardine, but I expect it’ll be closed by now.’

‘Long ago, I should think. Does he stay in the village?’

‘I think he goes back to Hereford. Whether he could get through tonight, though...’

‘We’ll talk to him first thing in the morning, one way or another. He’s not going to know we’re looking for him. Well... thank you, Ms Watkins. We got somewhere in the end, didn’t we?’

‘I’m not sure where we got. If he hadn’t told Alice about his conversion, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have told Dexter.’

‘We’ll see,’ Howe said. ‘Good night.’

Merrily gave the DC his phone back and went out through the porch to avoid Bliss for a while. The implications here were horrific. Tugging up the hood of Jane’s duffel, she walked out onto the forecourt, where the snow was falling hard again, like inside one of those glass things you shook.

I was bigger than Darrin, but he was real nasty, look. Stuck his knife in the back of my hand once. Had an airgun, shot a robin in the garden. Things people thought were nice, he’d wanner destroy.

It didn’t fit. And yet these things must have actually happened, because Dexter Harris wasn’t imaginative. It was just that Darrin hadn’t done them. And if Darrin hadn’t done them, then...

You’re a fuckin’ ole meddler, Alice, nobody assed you to start all this shit... what if everybody don’t want the truth out?

Dexter didn’t want it out.

She pushed back her hood, lifting up her face to the cascading sky, feeling the cold, stinging truth on her skin. Far from rejecting the idea of a Requiem Eucharist, a born-again Christian of the Charismatic persuasion – throwing up his arms and yelling that he’d been saved and praise the Lord – would see it as a sign, a response from God to his need to be cleansed of his sins.

Suppose Dexter was still in contact with Darrin? Suppose he knew about Darrin’s conversion, guessed that, in Darrin’s erratic mental state, it would all come flooding out, what had really happened that day, the things that Darrin had never talked about.

Never talked about because he was afraid of Dexter.

Dexter, the good boy. Not the most pleasant person, to talk to, but he worked hard and he was a martyr to his asthma. And all he did that night, after all, was drive the car.

Merrily walked, with determination, back into Stanner Hall, pulling out her own mobile, ringing Alice again, letting it ring for over two minutes before giving up and ringing Lol.

39 What Brigid Did

ALL THE TIME she was talking, Lol kept looking at the window. There ought to be curtains; maybe Merrily couldn’t afford curtains on a starvation stipend. The snow was coming down vertically out of a windless sky, as if it had been directed to obliterate the village.

And unless it had been an apparition of the newly dead, that definitely hadn’t been Darrin Hook at the window.

‘So, not a word from Alice?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘nothing. And it’s not likely she’s going to call now, is it?’

‘You do know what’s... implied here,’ Merrily said, fifteen miles away and safe, thank God. ‘You do realize what it suggests – about Dexter?’

‘It suggests that Dexter might not be your problem any more,’ Lol said carefully.

Merrily said, ‘If he is responsible for—’

‘Then you couldn’t have known, you had no reason even to suspect it. You didn’t know Darrin and, if what Howe says is right about his conversion, neither did Alice.’

‘It was my decision. My solution to their problem.’

Jeavons’s solution, Lol thought. He ought to tell her about Jeavons, but he didn’t think she’d take it in.

‘You gave them an option,’ he said.

‘The kind of option that someone like Alice was never going to refuse. When you think about it—’

‘Don’t think about it. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s a police matter, out of your hands. Your only problem now is going to be Alice, and if you start blaming yourself, that isn’t going to help. How’s Jane?’

‘Confused. Lol, why wasn’t Alice answering her phone?’

‘Probably because she hasn’t got one in her bedroom. I’ll go round and see if she’s OK, if you like.’

‘No... don’t do that. If she hasn’t been round and she hasn’t rung, I suppose that means she doesn’t know. If she’s asleep, let her sleep. I’ll call her in the morning, when she’s better able to handle it, before the police can make a move on her. Damn – Bliss is making signals. What’s it like there, now?’

He looked away from the window. ‘Don’t try and get back tonight, you won’t make it. Not even in Gomer’s truck. Is there somewhere you can sleep?’

‘It’s a hotel. But nobody’s sleeping.’

‘Call me back when you can, there’s a couple of things—’

‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘I love you,’ Merrily said, ‘so don’t—’

‘Eirion rang, too. He’s worried about Jane, and he—’

‘I’m going to have to go.’

Lol sat staring at the hypnotic sleep-light on the monitor. He’d promised to call Jeavons back after he’d spoken to Merrily, but all that had been superseded now. He glanced at the window. He couldn’t have told Merrily about Dexter looking in. He couldn’t have done that.

Because it meant that Dexter had still been here an hour ago. Here in the vicarage garden. Out there looking in.

The fish and chip shop must have been long shut, but the chances of Dexter being able to get a vehicle out of Ledwardine had, for a long time, been remote. Therefore, the chances were that Dexter was still here.

At Alice’s? Obviously. Where else could he have gone? Lol picked up the phone. Maybe he should ring Annie Howe himself, let her know about this. Tell her that Dexter Harris, whom she would presumably like to question in relation to the possible murder of his cousin, was here in Ledwardine.

But then, it wasn’t certain. Nothing about this was certain.

Ethel the black cat sat on the sermon book and watched Lol, as though sensing his indecision. Ethel had a red collar with a small round bell. The first time he’d been in this ancient house was when he’d arrived with Ethel, kicked and injured. And Merrily Watkins – ‘one of my uncles used to be a vet, in Cheltenham’ – had wrapped her in an old quilted body-warmer and laid her on the kitchen table examining her for internal injuries, removing bits of broken tooth. Lol often wondered if he’d fallen in love that night, when Merrily had said something like, ‘God, these lights are crap,’ explaining her belief that oaths were OK because they kept the holy names in circulation.

Without this cat...

‘You’re right.’ Lol stood up and went to find his wellies.

Bliss led Merrily back into the lounge – his incident room – where a brass-stemmed standard lamp lit the scratched wood panels with a light that was thin rather than soft.

Over the fireplace, Sir Arthur’s blue-tinted face gazed into places where Bliss wouldn’t want to go. Bliss sat down in the easy chair near the flaking fire, one leg hooked over the arm, and motioned her to the sofa opposite.

‘None of this goes out of this room, all right? And if it subsequently proves irrelevant to this case, it doesn’t get spoken of again. Even Andy doesn’t have clearance yet.’

Merrily sat down and closed her eyes. You could learn too much in one night. She’d shown him the chat-room printout that Jane had given her, told him where it had been found. She wondered where Jane was, but at least Gomer had been with her.

‘Best take off that sad old coat and have a coffee,’ Bliss said. ‘This could take a while.’

Jane looked up from making cheese toasties for the cops, watching Amber adding the herbs to her chocolate. Couldn’t believe either of them was doing this. Keeping busy, knowing it was all coming to an end – shadows lengthening, ghosts emerging, moss and mildew reclaiming the walls of Stanner. Like being in the band on the Titanic.

‘How can you just... go on?’

‘It’s what I do. I’m—’

‘A cook, yeah.’

‘Better than a conference, Jane,’ Amber said bitterly, ‘and without any dirty bedclothes. We’ll even get paid.’

After a while, Amber said, ‘She seemed such a godsend. A woman with all the management skills and diplomas and years of experience – a personable woman who was happy to work for a pittance and never minded scrubbing floors.’

Jane stopped grating cheese. ‘Do you know where she is?’

‘No.’

‘Do you think...?’ How could she ask what she wanted to ask? ‘Do you think Dacre was killed because of her?’

Amber stopped stirring. ‘Because of her?’

Jeremy wouldn’t come back and sit down. He walked into the little kitchen, with the dog at his heels, flinging open the back door, staring out across the yard, as if there was likely to be some personal message for him, scored out in the snow. When he turned round, back into the room, Danny saw pain passing across his face fast as a train over a level crossing.

‘You thought it was me had him, din’t you?’

‘Jeremy, till them cops come, I didn’t even know it was Sebbie dead.’

Danny pushed his fingers into his hair. It still wouldn’t penetrate his brain that Natalie Craven was the Brigid Parsons, one of those names that nobody who’d read a paper or seen the TV news over the last twenty-five years would ever totally forget.

‘How come we never knowed? How come nobody round yere knowed Paula’s daughter was Brigid Parsons? Tell me that.’

‘Nobody knew ’bout Paula, neither. They kept it quiet.’ Jeremy came away from the door and went and stood by the paraffin lamp, looking down at the glass. ‘Paula killed herself.’

‘When?’

‘Not long after giving birth. It was... pretty bloody horrible, Danny. Nobody talks about it. Nat’lie never learned about it till her dad was dyin’. Poor bugger blamed hisself, but it weren’t his fault. It was in her.’

‘So her mother killed herself, grandmother killed herself, and... It don’t bear thinkin’ about, Jeremy. None of it.’

‘Brigid growed up thinkin’ her mother died in childbirth. Which is true, in a way. Her dad, Norman, he had things to find out, too. Thought Paula was an orphan – which was true, like, but it was only when they come down yere he found out the truth about Hattie and Robert. The Nant was his now, see, but he felt it oughter be held on to for Brigid.’

‘That’d been me, I’d have wanted to get rid, fast. Specially after...’

‘He’d signed the lease by then.’

‘But you knew. About Brigid and what she done. I mean you muster knowed, when it was all in the papers. You and Sebbie.’

‘We never said nothin’. The two sisters never met. The Dacres knew what nearly happened when they was little, swore her’d never get another chance. And were they gonner spread it round they got two killers in the family now?’

Danny didn’t even like to think how Jeremy would have taken it. The girl he loved, the girl he’d prayed to God to send back. Jeremy in love with the memory of the monster who lured a boy of fourteen into an old railway shed with the promise of sex, and stabbed him and cut him and tore him to pieces with a little Kitchen Devil and her own nails. And the next night, while the police and the neighbours were still looking for the missing boy, did the same thing to his mate. TEEN FIEND, the Mirror said, when Brigid was convicted. This was the girl Jeremy had prayed to God to send back to him, and it didn’t bear thinking about, none of it.

‘I wrote to her,’ Jeremy said. ‘I wrote to her five, six times. Never had no reply. Figured mabbe her’d been moved and they never forwarded the letters. Turned out her dad wasn’t passing them on.’

Poor little sod. Was some folk born unlucky or what?

‘Wasn’t until he was dyin’, end of last year, that Norman sends for Brigid. Tells her the truth about who she was and where she come from. Tells her about Hattie.’

‘And what good did that do?’

‘Good?’ In the lamplight, Jeremy, for once, looked his age and then some, his face full of dips and hollows.

‘Must’ve seemed good for you,’ Danny said, and then he thought about it. ‘Bugger me, no wonder you rung me to come over when they turned up in that camper van. You was scared to death. You knew who it was gonner be all along. You just din’t know if her was gonner have two heads and bloody claws.’

He turned and walked back into the living room, where the fire was burning low, tossing uncertain shadows on to the walls. Danny saw a dark and tragic tapestry forming.

‘How long before Sebbie found out who the new woman was?’

‘Dunno, Danny.’

‘He ever ask?’

‘Never asked me.’

‘Just sent his Welsh shooters round to cause trouble. Put the wind up you. Let you know he was on the case. Cause a reaction. Was that it?’

‘Mabbe he seen the Hound.’

Danny snorted, turning to face the boy who was standing in the doorway now, his face mottled by the fire.

‘What he seen, Jeremy, was the curse of Chancerys comin’ back to the Stanner Valley.’

Jeremy cried out, so sharp and sudden that the dog whimpered and cowered away from him.

‘Why’d you take a rope into the barn?’ Danny said.

And couldn’t bear to hear the answer. He went and sat down by the fire, wishing to God he was at home with the cans on and The Queens of the Stone Age a satisfyingly numbing wooden mallet in his head.

‘I begged her to go,’ Jeremy said, like from a long way away. ‘I begged her to leave. I prayed for her to leave, same as I’d prayed for her to come back. Now I’m praying for her to get out before it... I could feel it coming.’

‘What?’

‘The shadow Hound. Death.’

‘Bollocks!’ Danny roared. And yet remembered when he seen the two of them in the Eagle, thinking how soon romance died.

‘And you seen the signs, Danny. Signs even you couldn’t miss. And yet you did.’

Danny let his hands fall from his ears. ‘What?’

‘The night this Nathan got beat up.’ Jeremy came to kneel down, side of Danny’s chair, like a dog. ‘You was there just before it happened, right? Think back, Danny – what was they saying?’

‘I don’t bloody know.’

‘Yes, you do. You tole me.’

‘They was... Like Foley said afterwards, Nathan called him a wimp. Then splat, splat.’

‘No, words? What did he actually say? What did Nathan say?’

‘Jeremy, for—’

‘What’d he say?’

‘Foley’s telling him to get the hell off his land or else, and Nat... Brigid... her’s like, Better do what he says. And then Nathan goes, What you gonna do about it, you and that fuckin’ little...’

Danny stopped, the words booming in his head louder than The Queens of the Stone Age and The Foo Fighters live on stage, together. And a big part of the black tapestry got itself blocked in.

‘... That fuckin’ little English wimp.’ The words shrank in Danny’s mouth.

Quarrel was with herself, Jeremy had said earlier. Me as got hit, mind.

‘Jesus Christ, Jeremy, he din’t mean Foley was a fuckin’ little English wimp, he meant... he meant you.’

He stood up, looked down at Jeremy by the chair, the boy’s eyes full of a knowledge that he wished he didn’t have.

‘Foley never lifted a finger against Nathan, did he?’ Danny said.

40 Extreme

ON THE SQUARE, the Christmas tree lights had gone off at midnight, and now the tree was shapeless with snow and joined at the hip to the market hall. The falling snow was so dense that it was like passing through lace curtains, the few lights still burning in Ledwardine peering out at Lol like suspicious, muffled eyes.

Crossing into Church Street where the roadway and the pavements had become one, he passed the timber-framed terrace that included Lucy’s house, its windows black, snow piled up on the step like a whole month of mail.

It was as if he was alone in the village. Everywhere, this white and quilted silence, like a chapel of rest.

A short way down the hill, the turning into Old Barn Lane was just another snow-flow now. But with hunched and crooked buildings either side, it was more sheltered here, the snow shallower, and Lol was able to hurry – as much as anyone could, moving like a wader in a congealing river.

In the months before he’d first met Merrily, when he was living in this village with Alison Kinnersley, he would sometimes walk down here for chips. Alice had lived over the shop then, and he vaguely remembered her moving out, into the first new home to be finished in Old Barn Close. Alice, it seemed, had always wanted a bungalow.

The shop was near the bottom of the lane before it fell away into fields. Blinds were down, no light shining through the gaps, and no street lamps to identify the entrance to the Close, about fifty yards further on. He’d been holding the vicarage’s black Maglite torch out in front of him, as if it was pulling him along. Now, passing the chip shop, its fatty miasma still in the air, he finally switched the torch on.

The Close was a so-called executive development of nine or ten houses and bungalows, architect-designed and well spaced between existing trees. Alice’s home was at the end, backing onto the old orchard chain that curved around most of the village, ending up back at the church.

OK, then. If there was a meaningful light on in the bungalow, he was going to knock on the door. If Dexter Harris answered it, he’d say he was sorry to show up so late, but he was bringing a message for Alice from the vicar who was stuck over in Kington, had tried to phone and couldn’t get a reply. It wasn’t brilliant, but it wouldn’t sound too suspicious on a night like this. If Dexter said that Alice was in bed, he wouldn’t argue, he’d just go back to the vicarage and try to get through to Annie Howe.

If Alice was there, however, he’d have to play it by ear. His conversations with her, in the old days, had never got much beyond salt and vinegar, but he thought she’d remember him, and he guessed that, like probably everyone else in this village, she’d know about him and the vicar. Whether he told Alice about Darrin, if she didn’t already know he was dead, would depend not least on whether Dexter was here or likely to return.

Lol stopped at the entrance to the Close, getting his breath back, brushing the snow from his glasses and the arms of his old army-surplus parka.

Why was he really here? Why was he doing this? Because he’d been unnerved by the face at the window? Even more by what Merrily had told him? Because he couldn’t just sit there doing nothing until he fell asleep in some chair? Because he would otherwise have felt useless?

No – face it – it was essentially because he knew that this was what Merrily would be doing if she was here. Merrily – and he didn’t like to contemplate this too deeply – would be afraid of what little fiery-faced Alice might have said or done and where it might have led.

Because of the relentless snow, he didn’t see the light in the end bungalow until he was halfway along the close. All the others were either in darkness or had outside lamps as a deterrent to burglars. At Alice’s, the light was in either the kitchen or the living room or both. Hard to say; curtains were drawn – cheerful red roses against a yellow trellis.

Both gates were open. A sign on one said Orchard’s End. There was a white truck in the drive, with big tyres and a couple of inches of snow on the bonnet. Dexter? Lol switched off the torch. There was also a light on over a side door next to the truck. He went up and rang the bell, noticing that the snow had been roughly cleared from around the door, that footprints leading around the back were already half whited-out.

He heard the bell ringing inside, an old-fashioned continuous ringing, strident. He stopped and waited. No response. He tried again, keeping his finger on the bell push for about ten seconds.

Inside the bungalow the ringing died away. The lights stayed on. The snow kept on falling in its windless silence.

There was a slim glass panel in the door. When Lol leaned on the door to peer through it, the door swung open, and he wasn’t expecting that at all.

Merrily lit a cigarette from the stub of the last. She never did this: it was chain-smoking, a sin. She hardly noticed until it was done and the smoke was curling up, past the waistcoat of Arthur Conan Doyle, like grey ectoplasm.

‘How long have you known about her?’

‘Me personally? Couple of months,’ Bliss said, ‘maybe longer. It’s a routine thing, notifying the local bobbies when someone of her... status moves into your patch. Social workers and the Probation Service watching their backs.’

‘How long did she serve?’

‘Eight, nine years. The last year in an open prison. They come out, for lengthening periods, to get work experience, and she was taken on at a big guest house, and she did very well, got on with people. Which is how she got the taste for it. Like being on a permanent holiday, and most of the folk you met were on holiday too, or transient workers. Temporary. Passing through.’

‘I suppose after being in one place for so long, it’s hard to settle down.’

‘She wasn’t. She was in about six places all over the country. Different young offenders’ institutions for the first years, and then two adult women’s prisons. I don’t think they knew what to do with her from the start. Smart, outgoing, quite good with people – long way from your usual moody psychos. But one of those young offenders’ joints – Borstals, as was – she was in there with boys, and that could get inflammatory at times. She was a walking challenge for the hard lads – physically very mature for her age – and there were a number of incidents. And then she absconded and got caught quick and moved on. I think everybody was happy when she was old enough for Styall, partly because it was near where she lived but mainly because it was all women.’

Merrily said, ‘Did the temporary employers know who she was?’

She was thinking, Did Jeremy know what Brigid did? But how could he not know? This was a national hate figure whose name, when it appeared in tabloid headlines, was almost invariably preceded by the word ‘evil’: Evil Brigid should never get out, says victim’s mother. And then: Evil Brigid pregnant. Evil Brigid freed in secret. And the media hunt – Where is Evil Brigid?

Here.

‘Not necessarily,’ Bliss said. ‘Some employers prefer not to know. And when she came out, she had a new name and new documents – driving licence, P45, all that. This is her second change of name – the first one, the press rumbled her at some hotel in Cornwall. That was when she dyed her hair. There was a rumour she’d had plastic surgery, but I don’t think so.’

‘The Probation Service are presumably still involved?’

‘Oh yeh, they’ve always been there in the background. And also, in this case, the officer who nicked her, Ellie Maylord, who was my boss for a while when I was a youngster. Later, she became the first female operational DCI on Merseyside, ended up as superintendent. But she was just a little DC when she brought Brigid Parsons in, and she’s always kept in touch with her... Well, I think she was fascinated, the way most people are, even coppers, by someone this... extreme.’

‘Inevitably.’ Merrily fingered her pectoral cross.

‘So it was Ellie who contacted me, on the quiet, in October. My boss already knew, it turned out, but I was well off the need-to-know list. Ellie was worried about why, after managing quite a big hotel in Shropshire, Brigid had wanted to come here, to this’ – Bliss looked around – ‘not terribly prosperous establishment. I said I’d make a few discreet inquiries, keep an eye on her. But, as you know, I’ve been a bit busy with one thing or another these last two months, so it got overlooked. Do you know why she came here?’

Merrily tipped her cigarette into a big metal ashtray, pushing it away. Bliss didn’t know, then, that Brigid Parsons was Hattie Chancery’s granddaughter, Dacre’s cousin. All he knew was that Dacre had been found dead and a convicted murderer was missing.

How come Hattie Chancery had failed to become part of the legend of Brigid Parsons?

Merrily retreated behind smoke; she’d need to think about this before enlightening him. ‘She became pregnant in prison, didn’t she? I remember reading a long piece in the Observer magazine some years ago – about a year after she came out.’

Recalling a photo of a woman’s silhouette, shot from a distance, in a wide, empty field at sunset. A little girl running ahead of her. The little girl who was now Jane’s unlikely best friend.

Jane’s friend, the daughter of Brigid Parsons. No wonder she was quiet.

‘Embarrassing,’ Bliss said. ‘It had to be either one of the male staff or someone she encountered on working days. But she never told, and she insisted on having the child. Toted the kid around with her all over the place. Admirable really, all the high-pressure jobs she managed to hold down and bring up a young baby. Something to prove, I suppose.’

‘I see.’ It all made sense now, what Jane had told her, about them moving from place to place, usually holiday resorts, lost in the anonymous army of migrant seasonal staff. Finally, travelling like gypsies. ‘What about her parents?’

‘The mother died when she was born. Dad supported Brigid, but then he got married again, had a new family. Didn’t see much of her until he was dying himself, not too long ago. After her father died, that was when she came down here.’

‘The head teacher at Moorfield, Robert Morrell – would he know who Clancy’s mother was?’

‘Might. I’m not sure. He’d love it, wouldn’t he, the old namby-pamby liberal.’

‘I’m just surprised he let her go near Jane.’

‘Oh, I think we all tend to misjudge Jane,’ Bliss said. ‘She can be a pain in the bum, but she’s from a nice home. Morrell might think Clancy could have worse friends.’

‘You’re being worryingly laid-back about this, Francis. Personally, I’m shattered.’

‘That’s because I know where I’m going. I’m accumulating background data for when we bring her in.’ He smiled tightly. ‘Which we will. We’ve got officers at the Thomas place.’

‘You’re making a few assumptions.’

‘I’m looking at the evidence. A woman goes missing from work at a hotel just a few hundred yards from the spot where a man is found dead in suspicious circumstances? I mean, even if this wasn’t Brigid Parsons...’

‘Surely they wouldn’t let her out without extensive psychiatric screening. I mean, how old was she when she killed those two boys – thirteen?’

‘Killed one boy,’ Bliss said. ‘Mark Andrew Goodison. Stuart Petit survived, just. She thought she’d killed him, almost certainly intended to, but he survived to finger her. If he hadn’t, I doubt she’d ever’ve been even questioned. The extreme savagery of it, nobody was looking for a girl. He lost an eye, Stuart, did you know?’

‘I’d forgotten.’

‘Most people just remember what happened to Mark – the bits of it the press felt able to print at the time. But whatever the shrinks say, I think there’s a good chance that the child who did that – hasn’t exactly gone away. Don’t you?’

‘I’ve never met her.’

‘Stick around,’ Bliss said.

They took the tractor, Danny and Jeremy – Danny realizing how much worse the conditions had got since he’d left home. But not being able to get back there, that was not an option.

Danny Thomas versus the worst winter for many a damn year, Danny Thomas versus God. No contest tonight.

When he got the engine going and the music started up, and this time it really was ‘Bad Moon Rising’, he got rid of it so fast he nearly broke the damn switch. And when Jeremy Berrows, hunched up in the other side of the cab, said, ‘It’s gonner be all right, I swear it’ll be all right,’ Danny couldn’t find it in him to make any kind of reply.

Ahead of him, he saw the lights up on Stanner Rocks, National Nature Reserve and crime scene. He saw the heads in the rocks like some primitive, pagan Mount Rushmore in miniature, rimed with snow and secrecy, and he wanted to blow the whole enigma into the endless night.

‘Danny, I know what it looks like to you, and that was why—’

‘Why you never said a word?’ Danny lurched in his seat, grinding the tractor onto the snowbound bypass, scraping his hair from over his eyes. ‘I can’t believe you never told me none of this, boy, I cannot believe it. I can’t believe you let that woman leave that kid with Greta.’

‘Danny, it—’

‘I can’t believe you’d do this.’

‘Danny, I’ve known her for over twenty-five years. I know all her problems, I know why she done what she done, and I know the things she won’t do.’

‘You’ve known she was a bloody murderer for twenty-odd years, and you still wanted her. You brought her into the valley, and you never said a word. You knowed what she done to Nathan, and still said nothin’. You know it en’t bloody changed, boy. That woman kills, and you let my Greta get involved in it, and you never said a word, and I thought you was my friend, and whatever happens I en’t never gonner forgive that.’

In the clean, shiny, chromium kitchen, Lol saw things that bothered him, like a single cup on the kitchen table, half full of cold tea. Like a tin of assorted biscuits with the top off.

These things bothered him because everything else in here was immaculately tidy.

He didn’t like to go further than the kitchen. He stood just inside the doorway, called out tentatively, ‘Mrs Meek?’

On the wall by the door was a calendar of Peter Manders scraperboard etchings of Herefordshire scenes. Above it, two framed photographs, one of four grinning blokes, including Dexter Harris, hefting between them what looked like a tractor wheel. The other was a formula studio portrait of a small boy with close-cropped hair. Roland?

Roland and Dexter, only Darrin missing. The bad boy, the black sheep.

In fact, the weak boy, the easily led boy who could have used some support from a strong, self-sufficient auntie, if she’d ever been told the truth.

A door across from Lol was open to the dimness of perhaps a hallway, but through another door, opposite, he saw a stuttering light.

‘Alice?’

A wide hall ending in an arched front door. From here, it was clear that the flickering was from a TV set in a lounge or living room. Lol went in.

‘Alice?’ In case she’d fallen asleep in front of the TV.

Leaving the back door unlocked, well after midnight?

On the widescreen TV, a black and white movie of Gaslight vintage was showing with the sound down: a woman in a doorway holding a lantern high.

This was a long room with a picture window overlooking the orchard, spectacularly snow-clad. The only light apart from the TV came from perfect red and yellow designer flames curling almost realistically from real coals on a gas fire in the bottom wall. The carpet was cream, the four-piece suite huge and expensive and vacant.

Lol went back into the hall. Doors on both sides, three of them slightly open. Bathroom: empty. Utility room with washing machine and dryer: empty. Toilet and shower room: empty.

He put an ear to the closed doors before slowly opening each of them. Two were bedrooms, with that room-freshener smell that told you they weren’t in everyday use.

There was no sound, either, from the third bedroom. Lol went in, switching on the light. He saw a white dressing table, a built-in wardrobe. The bed was turned down and the room felt warm. There was a small en suite bathroom and toilet.

Alice’s room. Nobody here.

The final room had evidently been intended for a study; it had built-in shelves and cupboards. There were cardboard boxes on the floor. On the wall opposite the door, by the window, was a framed local newspaper cutting showing a middle-aged man in an apron, holding out two bags of chips, a younger Alice looking on. The headline read: Frying Start – Sizzling New Venture for Farmer Jim.

Alice and Jim had been struggling for years on a small farm, not much more than a smallholding. Lol remembered someone saying that, by the time Jim died, the fish and chip shop in Old Barn Lane – the first chippie in an expanding Ledwardine – had proved to be the most lucrative business in this village, by a big margin, and that included the Black Swan.

A very worthwhile inheritance for somebody.

When Lol got back to the kitchen, Dexter Harris was sitting at the table, nibbling a chocolate biscuit. He barely looked up. The huge, solid greyness of him was reflected out of a chromium freezer door, a kettle, a Dualit toaster.

‘Whatever you took, boy,’ Dexter said, friendly enough, ‘let’s have it on this table yere. Else mabbe I’ll make a start by breakin’ your arm, see where we goes from there.’

41 Living on the Edge of a Chasm

NEITHER JANE NOR Amber noticed Beth Pollen until she was almost at the bottom of the kitchen steps.

‘Would this be a convenient time to talk?’

Amber picked up the earthenware jug for the chocolate, defensive. ‘Jane or me?’

‘I think both.’ Mrs Pollen looked tired, a bit frazzled. She said to Jane, ‘And I do want to talk to your mother.’

‘She’s around.’ Jane was embarrassed now about the way she’d clung to Beth Pollen at the rocks when the fox or the badger had run past.

‘But I want to clear the air on some things first. Everything, in fact.’

Jane put down the cheese-grater and stared at Mrs Pollen, still in her sheepskin coat, open over a pale blue jumper and jeans, as she came down the final step into the kitchen.

‘To begin with...’ Mrs Pollen turned to Amber. ‘When The Baker Street League cancelled their conference, that was entirely my doing. Neil Kennedy was actually quite amused, at first, by the idea of your husband trying to build a business around the dubious legend of Conan Doyle and the Hound of Hergest. And they were quite gratified with the terms he was offering – and the idea, if I may say so, of a weekend of your renowned cooking.’

Amber put the earthenware jug back on the French stove. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I had a long discussion with Neil Kennedy during the murder-mystery weekend. I told him Ben Foley believed he had conclusive proof that Doyle had been here, which he believed would finally discredit the Cabell legend, in Devon, as the source of the Hound. I said I understood Mr Foley, as a former television producer, hoped to use The Baker Street League to help him front a large-scale media campaign, particularly in America. And I told him... other things. Dr Kennedy was not terribly amused. As I’m sure you found out.’

Amber turned down the heat under the chocolate. ‘You’d better sit down.’

‘Thank you.’ Beth Pollen took a wooden stool next to the island unit, and Amber dragged over two more, and put on the halogen lights. Jane stared into Mrs Pollen’s weathered, guileless face.

‘You deliberately screwed it up for Ben?’

‘Yes.’

Amber said, ‘I don’t understand. Both Kennedy and you already knew there was proof that Doyle had been at Stanner. The document you mentioned... in the files of The Baker Street League?’

‘That doesn’t exist, Mrs Foley. I invented it. No article was written, as far as I know, for Cox’s Quarterly or any other defunct magazine. There is no proof, to my knowledge, that Conan Doyle ever stayed at Stanner or came to this area. He may have – all the indications are there, the coincidence of names – but we’ll probably never know. And if you remember, I said the other night that if anyone asked Kennedy about a handwritten document, he would deny all knowledge of it. Quite legitimately, as it happens.’

Jane felt like her head was filling up with a grey fog. She let Amber ask the question.

‘Why? Why did you want to do this to us?’

Beth Pollen sighed. ‘Because if Stanner had become, as Mr Foley had planned, a regular conference venue for The Baker Street League, the White Company would never have been allowed to set foot in the building. What I didn’t lie about was the enmity between the two organizations, which, as a member of both, I’ve been able to observe, over the years, in all its incredible peevishness. I realize the League is far more prestigious, prosperous and influential, and I’m sorry, but I wanted us in here. I wanted Alistair Hardy here. He has a remarkable ability.’

‘We don’t understand,’ Jane said.

Mrs Pollen sighed, her face coloured mauve by the halogen lights. ‘We had to mislead the White Company as well. Doubt I’d have been able to persuade them if I hadn’t been able to show there was evidence that Conan Doyle had been here at the critical moment. Alistair Hardy’s fees are... sizeable. He’s doing this for nothing because of the TV coverage.’

Jane felt herself exploding. ‘Get me out of here! Everybody who sets foot in this place just lies.’

Amber said, ‘Mrs Pollen, you said “we”?’

‘Yes,’ Beth Pollen said. ‘The other person.’

The other person. The phrase seemed to bounce off the stones in the wall.

Natalie. It all added up, didn’t it? When Ben had lost The Baker Street League conference, it was Nat who came up with an instant replacement and rescued the whole situation. OK, just a bunch of loony spiritualists, but better than nothing. The way Beth Pollen had turned up at the church, at just the right moment to impress Antony Largo. A set-up.

‘I was going to get round to that,’ Mrs Pollen said.

‘Brigid?’ Jane said.

‘So you do know,’ Mrs Pollen said.

Dexter had taken off his expensive biker’s jacket, uncovering a grey denim shirt with epaulettes and a badge on the breast pocket with twin exhaust pipes on it. He stood in the middle of the floor, his hands half-curled, like ring-spanners.

‘So you en’t took nothin’.’

It was likely he’d recognized Lol now as the guy he’d seen through the scullery window. But he wouldn’t know whether Lol had seen him, so he wasn’t letting on. Hence the catching-a-burglar routine.

It gave Lol some leeway. He told Dexter his story about the vicar getting worried when Alice had twice failed to answer the phone. Lol walking over here to see if everything was all right, finding all the lights on in the empty bungalow, with the back door unlocked. No more than the truth.

‘Sorry I came in like this, but anything could’ve happened.’

‘Like what?’ Dexter said.

‘I mean... where is she?’

‘How should I know? I come back from closin’ up the chip shop, hour or so ago, she en’t yere. Telly on and everything, no Alice. I been out lookin’ for her. No sign. Dunno where she gone. Neighbour’s, mabbe.’

‘They all seem to be in bed.’

Dexter shrugged.

‘You called the police?’

‘Not yet. Her’d go through the bloody roof. ’Sides which, how’s the police gonner get through with all the bloody roads blocked for miles around? Nah, her’s likely wandered off. Her’ll be back.’

Lol considered. He’d been honest so far, no call to deviate from that.

‘She’s had a shock. The vicar told me.’

Discovering that he was playing the Christian aide, the clergy groupie, the little guy in glasses who fluttered vaguely around the vicarage, a moth lured by the incandescence of its incumbent.

‘Tole you what?’

‘About your cousin.’

‘Yeah. Tough.’

‘You weren’t that close?’

Dexter shook his head. ‘Waste of fuckin’ space, you want the truth. Never kept a job, always in trouble with the law. Brought the whole family into disrepute.’ He leaned towards Lol, a bubble of moisture like an ornamental stud in the cleft of his lower lip. ‘So what’s with you and the vicar?’

‘Friends. I’m staying the weekend with her. She was called out to talk to someone who attempted suicide.’

‘Local?’

‘Kington.’

‘En’t gonner get back from there in a hurry.’

‘So I’ve got to ring her back about Alice. She’s worried.’

Dexter stared at him blankly, like, What do you want me to do about it? He went to the chrome-fronted fridge/freezer. ‘You wanner lager?’

‘No, it’s... Yeah, OK. Thanks.’

Dexter got out two cans of Stella Artois, tossed one to Lol. ‘Wanner help me take a look around, is it?’

‘That’s a good idea.’

‘Right, then.’ Dexter put on a grim, knowing smile, snapping the ring-pull on his beer can. A smugness there, Lol thought, a satisfaction.

‘Which way do you think she might’ve gone?’

‘Put it this way, if you gets to Leominster, turn back.’ Dexter had a swig of lager, took his leather jacket from the back of a chair, pulling a pair of black driving gloves out of one of the pockets. ‘Never mind, boy, be a cold bed for you tonight, anyway, look.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Don’t gimme that “friends” shite.’

Dexter clapped Lol on the back. It was as if he was on a roll and nothing could go wrong for him tonight.

Yes, Jane had heard of her. Although of course it had all happened long before she was born. She knew about her in the way she knew of, say Lizzie Borden, a half-mythical figure with a rhythmical, nursery-rhyme name and an underlying pulse of horror.

Brigid Parsons killed some boys.

There were others. There was Mary Bell, whose name you knew because it was such a nice, short, wholesome name, and the killers of little Jamie Bulger, whose names you could never remember.

But this was less horrific, surely, because only one of the boys died. And he was older than Brigid Parsons, so the element of cruelty was missing, or, if it was there, it was different. Different with Brigid Parsons.

Different with Natalie Craven.

You’re asking me what I believe? I believe you don’t let anybody fuck you about. That’s it, really.

This was unreal, and it wasn’t less horrific at all. Jane had an idea of how bad it actually was; she’d once read a colour-supplement feature: Where Is Brigid Parsons? Something like that.

Brigid Parsons could never call herself that again, in the same way that Mary Bell had had to lose her fresh, clean name – although apparently she was a nice woman now, not the same person as the child who’d killed two little boys and given herself away by asking to see them in their coffins.

Who were you kidding? In some ways, Brigid was worse. For cruelty, substitute plain savagery. The magazine had revealed details that could not be published in the papers at the time, as those were days when family papers didn’t go into details about...

... Mutilation.

Jane sat on her stool, looking down at her fingers, empurpled in the lights, then up at Beth Pollen, who had revealed the unbelievable. And then at Amber, who hadn’t been able to speak for whole minutes, it seemed like, and when she did it was just to say faintly, ‘Does Ben know?’

Jane looked back down at her fingers. The thing was that Natalie was just so... . cool.

Amber stood up and went and did a very Amber thing – she stirred the chocolate, although it was probably ruined by now.

Then she came and sat on the stool with her hands in her lap.

‘Does Ben know?’

‘I wouldn’t think so,’ Beth Pollen said. ‘Though I suppose everyone will know in a short while, when they either find her or the media find out they’re looking.’

Jane looked up at the high window, almost obscured now by layers of snow that, from down here, looked grey, like concrete. Christ, she thought, Christ.

This explained everything about Clancy: why she was so quiet, the tall, gawky kid behind the pile of books, why she’d been to so many different schools.

Why she’d leapt up from her homework in horror when Nat had walked down these steps with blood all over her arms.

The great revelation over, Beth Pollen talked about her and Natalie.

In the drab aftermath of his death, Beth had taken up her husband’s final research project, the previously unchronicled history of a great Victorian house on the very border of Wales and England. She’d thought it might make a small book, locally published, with his name on its cover, a fitting memorial. Sometimes she could sense him at her elbow as she typed, suggesting a better word, rebuking her for attempting to include some picturesque but uncorroborated anecdote.

Although the text would be tinted by her growing interest in spiritualism, the very sense of Stephen had made Beth more assiduous in her research. And that was how she’d met Natalie Craven, who also was awfully interested in the history of Stanner Hall.

‘I suppose I needed a friend. No, that’s wrong... I suppose I needed a different sort of friend. She could almost have been my daughter, but that’s not how it was, either. She had this mature awareness of how things worked – how one might turn situations around – I suppose it was years of surviving in the prison system that made her like that, but of course I didn’t know that at the time. She simply fired me, gave me back my energy.’

‘She can make things happen,’ Jane said. ‘I think it’s because she doesn’t care whether they happen or not.’

‘And I was intrigued by her relationship with Jeremy Berrows. Absolutely nothing about him – or so you thought at first. Only slowly becoming aware of a kind of native spirituality – the kind that you expect to find in farmers whose families have lived close to the land for centuries, but seldom do these days. Oh, I was very curious about Jeremy and how those two came to be together.’

‘Especially after all those years apart,’ Jane said.

‘Well, the first ten she could do nothing about. And then, when you realize, approaching middle age, that perhaps you’ve never been able to connect with anybody as fully as the farm boy you met when you were twelve – that maybe you really were two halves of something – what do you do about it? Nothing. You don’t really believe the validity of a memory that old, do you? It’s like a myth.’

Two halves... Jane thought about Jeremy Berrows walking into his barn with a rope. She said nothing.

Beth Pollen said, ‘We discussed it, after she’d revealed her real... her former identity.’ She glanced at Jane. ‘And if you’re wondering how that came about, it was when we were researching Hattie, copying old photographs, and there was one of her as a girl, with her family, and I said, unthinking, “Oh, she looks rather like Clancy.” Could have bitten my tongue off when I saw Natalie’s face, but that’s how it came out.’

‘I think I’ve seen that picture. It’s in her room now – Hattie’s room.’

‘So the next day we were due to go to Kington Church together. She didn’t turn up. But the following day, early in the morning, there she was, awfully pensive. And just told me, quite simply, who she was and what she’d done. No attempt to justify or explain it, and she didn’t swear me to secrecy – I hope she knew she didn’t have to. I certainly haven’t said a word to anyone... until now.’

‘Didn’t knowing about that, you know, alter things?’

‘Threaten the friendship? Why should it? In some ways, it deepened it, because I felt this overwhelming need to understand her. I felt that no one, except perhaps Jeremy, ever had. And I felt that Stephen had brought her to me.’

‘But she was a murderer,’ Amber said.

‘And she’d been punished for it.’

‘And she was... that woman’s granddaughter.’

‘I’d be jolly stupid if I said that didn’t frighten me. I remember that when I recognized the awful parallel between Hattie and the blood-weary Robert, and Natalie and Jeremy, I was so scared for Jeremy. But in the end I realized that this, in some strange way, had only intensified the relationship. They were living on the edge of a chasm. I think, when she met him again, with the knowledge of what had gone before, she knew that if she didn’t take that risk – seize it – then she’d just be... giving in to the past. And that’s not how she is.’

Jane said. ‘Let’s get this out. You think that whatever made Hattie Chancery do what she did was also present in Brigid Parsons?’

‘It’s what she needs to know, and it’s why she came back. She realizes there’s a negative energy inside her that she can’t always control. Her mother...’ Beth Pollen took a breath. ‘Natalie doesn’t think, doesn’t want to think it’s a mental illness.’

‘You and she think there’s a... psychic connection with Hattie?’

‘This is why I wanted Alistair here. People like you might demean spiritualism, but I think there is something to be discovered here, and it’s nothing that we’re going to find written down.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jane said, ‘I can’t believe an intelligent woman like you really thinks that someone like Hardy can deal with something this... enormous. I mean, he... He’s a phoney.’

Jane heard men’s voices and footsteps at the top of the stone stairs. Two men were coming down the steps. Jane was expecting cops, or maybe Hardy and Matthews. She really didn’t care if Hardy had heard her talking about him.

‘He isn’t a phoney, believe me,’ Beth Pollen said. ‘But I didn’t say that I thought he could deal with it. A medium is simply what the word says. It’s about communication, rather than solutions.’

Amber turned to Jane. ‘I think she means that’s something for your mother.’

‘Oh.’

It was Ben Foley who sprang from the bottom step. ‘Amber, I’m sorry if I’m interrupting anything, but we’ll need another room.’

The man with Ben bestowed on Jane a gracious smile.

‘Jesus, I wouldnae like to do that journey again. Thank you, hen, you’ve got a hell of a nose for a developing situation.’

Nothing was ever simple, nothing ever painless.

Danny had been aware of diamond-bright blue-white vehicle lights behind them on the bypass, sticking with them after they turned off at Walton, using their tracks. But with snow fuzzed all over his wing mirror he couldn’t be sure what it was, and by the time they pulled up at his place the lights had vanished.

It was when Jeremy got down to open the farm gate for him that the little black Daihatsu appeared, coming the other way, down from Kinnerton. Danny had the idea it had been waiting in the lay-by, about a hundred yards back, to see who was in the tractor. Now it stopped, hugging the hedge, wedges of snow collapsing onto its roof as someone got out, a woman in a blue waterproof. Then Jeremy was springing back from the gates, and he was locked together with the woman in the tractor’s headlight beams.

And Danny was down from the cab, real fast, and in through the farm gate.

Greta had the door open before he reached it, standing there in a wash of yellow, and just for a moment it was like the first time he’d ever seen her, in a long floaty frock with little golden stars, like a dusty sunbeam.

‘You all right?’ Danny almost sobbing in relief.

Gret said, ‘I couldn’t do nothing, Danny. Had to let them in. Wasn’t nothing I could—’

‘What?’ And then Danny heard another engine up on the road and turned and saw the blue-white lights hard behind the tractor at the gate, heard the jolt of vehicle doors opening.

‘When they told me,’ Greta said, ‘about Sebbie Dacre...’

And then behind her, inside the house, a girl’s voice was screaming out, in real distress, ‘No! Mum, go away! Don’t come in!’ And there were sounds of pulling and scuffling, and this long, rending wail of despair.

Greta said, ‘You better—’

A copper came past her then, out of the front door, and Danny recognized his grey moustache: Cliff Morgan, sergeant.

‘Don’t get involved, Danny, eh?’ Cliff said.

But Danny ran back with the coppers to the open gate, where meshing headlights had turned the snow magnolia, and Jeremy and Natalie Craven were boxed in between the tractor and Jeremy’s old black Daihatsu, in the centre of all these beams of hard light, snow coming down on them, cops gathering in a wider circle, blocking the lane.

But they were separated from it. World of their own. Jeremy with his scarf wound around his neck, so she wouldn’t see what he’d done to hisself, holding her hand real tight. ‘Where you been?’ he kept saying. ‘Where you been?’

Natalie Craven pulled his head into the crease of her shoulder.

‘It’s all over,’ Natalie said, long hands in his fluffy hair. ‘All done now.’

42 Alleluia

HE DIDN’T EXPECT them to find her. That was clear. Dexter wasn’t subtle, and he didn’t expect them to find Alice.

They went up to the top of Old Barn Lane, back into Church Street and down to the Ox with its frosted front windows, a dim yellow glow visible from somewhere back in the pub.

‘They used to drink yere, when Jim was alive,’ Dexter said, as if they might see Alice peering in, thinking it was still 1979.

Dexter was going through the motions.

Lol wiped snow from his glasses with a forefinger. ‘How did she find out about your cousin?’

‘Eh?’

‘You said you thought it was the shock that might’ve made her wander off.’

‘I said that?’ Dexter sniffed and slumped off round the corner, where an alley led to public lavatories. Lol followed him. A tin-hatted lamp on a wrought-iron bracket turned snowflakes into falling sparks.

‘Check out the Women’s, you reckon?’ Dexter said.

‘It’s all locked up.’ Lol could see an iron gate, a chunky padlock.

‘Pity.’ Dexter finished off his lager, tossed the can to the end of the alley. He came over, leaned down into Lol’s face, his arms folded. ‘You really poking that little vicar?’

‘Not right now,’ Lol said.

‘Her go like Alleluia! when her comes?’ Dexter burst out laughing. ‘Just thought o’ that.’

‘Must remember to tell her,’ Lol said.

‘Alleluia when her comes.’ Dexter laughed up at the sky.

‘What do you reckon happened to him?’ Lol followed Dexter round to the front of the pub, where they stood under its open porch. ‘Just seems odd, a bloke falling in the road.’

‘Pissed, most likely,’ Dexter said.

‘He hadn’t given it up, then?’

‘Uh?’

‘Turning Christian?’

‘Christian.’ Dexter coughed and spat into the snow. ‘He never. He just said what he wanted ’em to think – Alice, and fuckin’ daft Dionne. I’ll tell you, he was a weak bastard, always gonner go wrong. Too weak to hold a job down. Not like me, Alice knew that. I was all she got, look. Me as looked out for her. Sisters got their own lives and their families up in Hereford. Laughing their tits off at Alice, all this ole church stuff. I was all she got, daft ole bitch. Couldn’t have no kids, look.’

‘How long you been helping at the chip shop?’

‘Helping? Cheeky cunt. When I’m in there, I’m running that place, look, reorganizin’. All these idle assistants, all this chitchat, we don’t need that. Get ’em served and on to the next one, don’t give ’em too many chips neither. Where them customers gonner go, they don’t like it? En’t like there’s competition. I says to ’em, these women, you do what I say, don’t gimme no stress, look, and we’ll get on. Where’s your beer?’

‘Must’ve left it on the table.’

‘No fuckin’ use there, is it, boy? Where you wanner go now?’

‘Ring the police?’

‘Waste o’ time. Cops is shit round yere. They en’t gonner look for an ole woman in this. What we’ll do, we’ll go round the ole bowling green and back up the square, see how it looks then. What’s your name, I ask you that?’

‘Lol.’

‘Kind o’ name’s that?’

‘A short one.’

‘Got a job, Lol?’

‘Bit of singing. Write songs.’

‘That a proper job?’

‘It is, actually.’

‘All right, what we’ll do, we’ll go round the bowling green, but we’ll come out by the Swan. That’s what we’ll do.’

Somebody who expected never to be contradicted or refused, due to being asthmatic and not looking for stress.

Lol remembered how, when he was working with Dick Lydon, the Hereford psychotherapist, Dick had this disabled client with the same attitude. You had to humour them to begin with, Dick used to say, and then, after a while, make it obvious that you were humouring them so they’d see a reflection of themselves.

That could take all night with Dexter. It could take all night, and it still wouldn’t work. Whatever Dexter had done tonight, he was proud of himself. He kicked a lump of snow, hands punching out the pockets of his leather jacket, killing time looking for someone he knew they wouldn’t find.

‘What you waitin’ for?’

‘I’m just thinking,’ Lol said. ‘Where is Alice likely to have gone?’

‘Coulder gone back home by now, for all I knows.’

‘We’d have seen her. Unless she... We haven’t checked out the orchards at the back of the bungalow, have we? There’s a path through the orchards. Where people walk their dogs?’

‘Alice didn’t have no dog, never went for no walks.’

Past tense. Always past tense.

‘No,’ Lol said, ‘but—’

‘I said her never went for no fuckin’ walks.’

Lol tightened up inside. Dexter didn’t want him checking out that footpath.

‘It’s, er... also a short cut to the church, isn’t it? And she was a church cleaner. The head cleaner. Be the quickest way for her to go.’

‘Not at bloody night.’

‘As head cleaner, she’d probably have keys. If she was very cut up about what happened, she might’ve got it into her head to go and... offer up a prayer?’

‘At night?’

‘Like you said, they do strange things, old people, don’t they?’

The squeak of fists clenching in leather gloves.

Lol turned into the tracks they’d made, back up towards the square. ‘Tell you what, if you go and check round the old bowling green, like you said, and I’ll have a walk up to the church... Then I’ll follow the footpath back the other way. You won’t need the torch, will you?’

He wiped the new snow off his glasses and walked off.

After a few seconds, he was aware of Dexter following him. Not altogether a pleasant sensation.

‘Mrs Watkins.’ Merrily had been looking for Jane and he’d come down the main stairs, a man with a laptop and black-framed glasses. ‘Matthew Hawksley. I suspect we may have exchanged e-mails.’

‘Yes. I believe we did. Sorry about that. I just wanted to know what my daughter was getting into.’

‘She isn’t getting into anything. We try not to involve anybody under the age of twenty-one.’

‘Well, that’s... good.’

‘Anyway, we’re glad to have you with us,’ Matthew said.

‘Now that sounds ominous.’

‘This place is ominous,’ Matthew said. ‘What’s been happening tonight only underlines it.’

‘A murder can make a children’s playground seem ominous.’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘do they know it’s murder?’

‘It’s a lot of manpower for a suicide, Matthew.’

‘Yes.’ He smiled. ‘Look, I know how the clergy, in general, feel about spiritism, so I won’t bend your ear on that, but – have you got a couple of minutes?’

‘Maybe hours. I don’t think I’m going to get home tonight.’

‘You’re probably right. Poor you. Look, I’d hate to say this in front of Ben Foley, but my feeling is that this place – this house, this hotel – should never have been built.’

‘No, best not to say that in front of Ben.’

‘Not built here, is what I mean. Not as if it was erected on the site of a former dwelling; there never was a house here.’

‘On Stanner Rocks?’

‘I’d probably argue that this site has a degree of psychic instability.’

‘Jane would say pagan magic, and she’d put it down to the Border. Would that be in line with your thinking?’

Matthew grimaced. ‘What you had was an obscenely rich family moving to a generally poor area. Perhaps they were warned, perhaps not. They were, after all, bringing wealth and employment.’

‘And modern science to an area riddled with primitive superstition?’

‘Spiritism.’ Matthew smiled ruefully. ‘I wish we had a better word for it. I’d be the first to agree that very few of the claims made by people like Conan Doyle have been substantiated. In fact we’re no further forward now than we were then – except that we’re less susceptible to frauds.’

‘Wouldn’t say that necessarily.’

‘All right’ – he put up his hands – ‘let’s not go down that road. Let’s get back to geophysics. I mean, look around... Even on a simple structural level, it doesn’t feel right – damp coming through everywhere, woodwork rotting. I suspect the heating will never be adequate. Standing here, now, it’s almost as if we’re standing on the bare rock. Am I telling you things you already know?’

‘You mean people didn’t live here until we had an urban, industrialized society that believed man was destined to have full dominion over the natural world – i.e. the Victorians?’

‘Bottom line is, Conan Doyle notwithstanding, Foley’s going to go bankrupt here in no time at all, and he knows it. When I first heard that somebody had taken a dive off Stanner Rocks, I half thought it was going to be him. Hello—’

Merrily turned to follow his gaze. DS Mumford had come in from the car park and was standing just inside the entrance, bulky as a lagged cistern in one of those long, dark overcoats on which snow appeared to evaporate. Bliss appeared in the doorway of his incident room. Mumford nodded.

Matthew said, ‘I don’t know much about your side of things, but Beth Pollen tells me there’s something you can do called an Exorcism of Place. Cleanses a place of bad vibes, the residue of unfortunate acts. Makes it a more amenable place to live and work.’

‘It’s not feng shui, Matthew.’

‘I didn’t—’

‘Has anyone asked you to mention this?’

‘I’m... just sounding you out, Reverend. But I think my colleagues – Beth, anyway – are getting a little nervous. The TV producer’s arrived and he and Foley are intent on filming something tonight, as originally planned.’

‘With all this?’

‘With the police action as background. Sexy telly.’

Two uniformed police were opening up both swing doors to the porch and the tall detective who’d connected Merrily with Annie Howe moved to a vantage point near the unlit Christmas tree.

‘Are they bringing something in?’ Matthew asked.

‘Someone, I’d guess.’

She heard doors opening behind her, sensed more people standing there. The electric current passing through the lobby could have relit the tree and doubled the candlepower of the chandelier. Everyone tensed for that first glimpse of Brigid Parsons. Even, presumably, the people who already knew her as Natalie Craven.

‘Given what’s happening, Beth now feels apprehensive about what we’d originally planned,’ Matthew said. ‘I think she’d be happier if there was a spiritual dimension to it.’

‘Making it even sexier telly, right?’

Headlamps speared through the porch and then veered away – a vehicle stopping directly outside the doors. The two policemen moved to either side of the entrance. Mumford and a stocky policewoman in a dark blue jersey waited by the reception desk.

Presently, five people came in through the porch: two uniforms, two detectives, one woman.

‘We appreciate you can’t just exorcise a place willy-nilly. You’d need a focus,’ Matthew said.

For just a moment, from about ten feet away, the gaze of the killer, Brigid Parsons, met Merrily’s. The eyes were brown and candid. What had she expected – cold, bleak, washed clean of humanity? Brigid was wearing a fleece-lined light-blue waterproof jacket hanging open over a dark shirt and jeans. Her head was held high, the dense dark brown hair falling back. As if she was finally ready to shed the years of dyes and deception.

Matthew said, ‘We were thinking that the late Hattie Chancery might fit the agenda.’

43 Tough Ole Bat

MERRILY FOUND GOMER in his truck, parked on the edge of the forecourt where the snow was churned up like cold custard. She’d climbed in next to him just as he finished talking to Danny on his old car-phone.

‘How’s Jeremy taking it?’

Gomer got out his ciggy tin, squinted at it, then put it back in a pocket of his scarred old bomber jacket.

‘When things is bad, Jeremy just closes down, like he’s been unplugged.’

‘Where are they now, Gomer?’

‘Back at The Nant.’

Through the windscreen, Merrily watched a policeman come out of the porch and look up at the flaking sky. The snow had become sporadic again, as if the weather was playing with them. One of the witch’s-hat towers was wreathed in a pinkish vapour.

‘And Clancy?’

‘Still at Greta’s, with a woman cop. Cliff Morgan, he reckoned they’d likely bring her yere tomorrow, give ’em some time together, ’fore her mam’s taken to Hereford. Don’t look like that’s gonner happen till it gets light and they clears the roads. Any chance her’ll walk away from this, vicar? Light sentence? If her had good reason? Not a nice feller, Sebbie.’

Merrily shivered inside Jane’s worn duffel coat, tightened her scarf. Clearly Gomer didn’t yet know that this was Brigid Parsons and the chances of her getting out of prison ever this time were remote.

‘Cops know her’s Hattie’s granddaughter, vicar?’

‘I think they’d regard that as a closed case.’

The curtains in the hotel lounge had been drawn now, for the interrogation of the prime suspect. A shadow rose against them: Bliss throwing up his arms in probable frustration, but it looked like he was dancing.

‘Nothin’ happens round yere’s ever closed. You knows that,’ Gomer said.

The church’s main door was locked, and there was nothing in the stone porch apart from the side benches, the parish notice-board and a rack of leaflets.

‘Satisfied?’ Dexter said.

Lol couldn’t see Dexter, but the density of him made the stone porch feel claustrophobic. He bounced the torch beam around one last time.

‘You’re a funny bugger, Lol. What’s she to you?’

‘Alice?’

‘Less it gets you brownie points with the vicar. Gets you into her, whatsit, cassock.’

‘That must be it, then,’ Lol said tightly.

He wanted to smash the torch into Dexter’s face. Instead, he switched it off so that Dexter couldn’t see him thinking. When Dexter had appeared at the scullery window, he’d come across the lawn from the orchard, and then gone back the same way, which would have brought him into the churchyard. Dexter had been this way before.

Lol looked out, down the churchyard path and found that he couldn’t see the lychgate. Normally it would be outlined in gold, from the lantern on the perimeter wall.

The lantern had gone out. Lol bent and peered through where the gate would be. Usually, you would see the lamps on the square and the partly floodlit profile of the Black Swan.

‘Power’s gone.’

‘Big surprise,’ Dexter said.

He was right; it was bound to happen. Sometimes it only lasted a couple of minutes, but more often three or four hours. And occasionally, in weather like this, two or three days.

Lol switched on the torch. ‘Just hope the phone line’s still up. You want to check that footpath, through the orchard, or call the police now?’

‘En’t your problem. You might as well go home. I’ll call ’em from the bungalow, look.’

‘OK.’ Lol would call them, as soon as he got back to the vicarage. ‘Well... I hope she’s all right.’

‘Tough ole bat,’ Dexter said. ‘Hey—’

‘Sorry?’

‘Give the vicar one for me.’ Dexter sniggered.

‘’Night, Dexter.’ Lol walked back into the churchyard. The snow had slowed again, or maybe the loss of light just made it seem that way.

‘Hold on – wrong way, boy.’

‘I’ll go through the orchard, into the vicarage garden.’

‘Don’t wanner do that this time o’ night. Bloody dangerous, look, all this—’

‘Done it loads of times. And I can check the other door, side of the church, on the way. You never know, do you?’

And now he did. He moved as quickly as he could through the untrodden snow, listening for the sound of Dexter crunching after him, like before, but it didn’t come.

He adjusted the head of the torch to issue a wide beam, and the graves appeared out of the snow, like the stumps of a shorn forest, all the unsightly bits – the borders and the gravel beds, the pots of long-dead flowers – submerged.

The path, too, had vanished, and he had to guess his way through the wider gaps between graves and tombs overhung by the snow-bent branches of elderly apple trees.

He stopped when he heard the breathing.

Coming from somewhere in front of him, and it was very loud, theatrically loud and eerie – vampire breathing. Something alive among the graves.

Dexter. Dexter had done a circuit of the church and was waiting for him and letting him know. He’d lied to Dexter – been this way no more than once or twice, in high summer. He turned, and his foot stabbed into a squat gravestone, mostly buried. He pulled back in pain, shining the torch directly ahead of him, the beam hitting a wall of white, an impassable snowbank. Swinging the torch to the right he found one of the old toppled tombs, its cracks and cavities compacted with snow.

And what looked like a collapsed, eroded stone angel, breathing.

Antony Largo was in his denims and he looked invigorated and younger than Jane remembered him, and more cheerful. Pacing the kitchen, sizing things up. The stubble on his face was almost a beard now, and made his grin seem bigger and whiter.

‘And how were you received, Matt?’

Matthew Hawksley considered. ‘She was polite, courteous... but I’m not holding my breath.’

‘She won’t go near it,’ Jane said. ‘Even a minor exorcism takes a lot of preparation – days, sometimes. They don’t go into it without long discussions with like everybody. In this case, she’d need the green light from the Bishop.’

‘Ah well,’ Antony said philosophically. ‘If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen.’

But Jane knew that he wouldn’t give up after all the trouble he’d taken to get here. After talking to her on the phone, he’d called up a guy who ran a film-unit resources business – called him up at home in the middle of the night and pestered him for something heavy and all-terrain within the hour. Whatever kind of money Antony had been waving around had brought him this monster Shogun, and then he’d done the journey the hard way, blasting up from London, through Gloucester and down to Ross. White-hellraiser.

‘Extremely nasty in places, but I just plugged on. Miles tae go before I sleep.’ He’d grinned. ‘Sleep? When I fetched up here, it was like I was already there – very dreamlike. Damn cops wouldnae even let me in at first.’

‘They thought you were a journalist,’ Ben had said, glancing at Amber, who was back at the stove, making soup and resenting all these people in her kitchen. ‘I think we’ll have to play all this by ear.’

Seeing Natalie brought in for questioning had unnerved Ben. Jane and Amber had agreed not to discuss what they’d learned from Beth Pollen, if only because Antony was back. OK, Women of the Midnight was TV history now, but if he found out Natalie’s real identity, nothing would stand in his way, like nothing.

The contemporary dynamic. The now drama.

‘I don’t know about the rest of you,’ Ben said, ‘but I’m just hoping this is some awful, awful mistake.’

‘Well,’ Antony said, ‘whoever the hell this Sebastian Dacre was, he’s given us a buzz we cannot ignore.’

‘Antony, everybody’s knackered, everybody’s fractious, everybody’s upset...’

‘Wrong,’ Antony said. ‘Everybody’s electrified.’

In semi-darkness, the dining room was like a derelict chapel – a dead fireplace at one end, at the other this lofty stained-glass window fogged with night and snow.

‘If you’re getting feelings of déjà vu,’ Bliss said, ‘it doesn’t hold any nice memories for me, either. As you know.’

He meant the time in October – although to Merrily, it still felt as raw as last week – when he’d asked her to talk to a particular man facing a murder charge, and she’d been dreading it and relieved when it hadn’t come off. And then the situation had turned into a free-rolling tragedy, and the guilt and remorse had kicked in.

Which was why there was no way she could say no to this one, or even think no.

The door to the hall was open, and they were standing in a narrow alley of diffused light. Bliss had been waiting when she and Gomer came back into the hotel.

‘We’ll be outside at both ends, Merrily.’

‘Tell me again. Give me all the details.’

‘There are no details. We never got that far.’

‘Then give me the outline again.’

‘She admits killing Dacre – that’s it. She keeps saying, “I killed him, what else do you want?” I say, “I want to know why.” She says, “You wouldn’t understand.” And then, after a bit, she goes, “If you do a couple of things for me, I’ll think of a full explanation for what happened, I’ll write it all down, and I won’t go back on it. I won’t ask for a lawyer and I’ll plead guilty.” And I’m saying, “But, Brigid, it won’t be the truth, will it?”

‘And she’s saying, “Whenever did the truth matter to a copper?”

‘Words to that effect. People don’t have much of an opinion of the police any more, do they? Not even convicted murderers. After I tell her I don’t think she’s actually in the best position to start demanding deals, we sit there in complete silence. Like, normally, I can sit quietly for as long as you like if I’ve got an excuse to keep staring at a lovely woman. But this one was somehow in control. Probably a status thing: the nationally famous killer and the obscure provincial detective. After about two minutes, I’m going, “All right, what is it? What are you after?” ’

Mumford’s shape in the doorway reduced the light to a corona around him.

‘Sorry to disturb you, boss, it’s as we feared: no chance of getting her into headquarters in the next four, five hours. Until daylight, in fact. Apparently, seventeen roads’ve been closed. Mostly this end of the county.’

‘Shucks.’

‘We can’t even get the body away.’

‘Where is he?’

‘In the van on the car park.’

‘You better tell all that to Howe, then.’ Bliss didn’t sound too unhappy. He turned to Merrily. ‘The Ice Maiden’s finally discovered who Natalie is. And consequently has decided the interrogation requires a woman’s touch. Looks like you’ll have to do. She’d hate that, wouldn’t she?’

‘Frannie...’

‘Remind me to compliment the esteemed leader of Hereford Council on putting all our money into new shopping centres instead of winter maintenance. We have the lady to ourselves. Let’s dance the night away.’

‘What did she say when you asked her what she was after?’

‘She said, “I’d like to see my daughter, alone, as soon as you can arrange it, and I’d also like, at some point, to talk to a Church of England minister called the Reverend Merrily Watkins.” Naturally, I ask her why and naturally she declines to tell me. And when I write down this vicar’s name I ask her to spell it because, naturally, we’re unacquainted.’

‘Why do I still get the feeling you engineered this?’

‘It’s what she said, Merrily, I swear to God.’

‘She didn’t mention Jane?’

‘No, thankfully she didn’t mention Jane.’

‘It sounds as if she doesn’t know I’m here.’

‘Then let’s surprise her,’ Bliss said. ‘For some reason that escapes me, despite all my training, experience and natural flair some people seem to prefer to unburden themselves to you. I’m not proud. It could save time.’

‘And if she tells me things in strict confidence?’

‘Then you can tell her what a basically nice, understanding person I am and how much better she’d feel sharing it all with me – as distinct from the cold-hearted friggin’ bitch awaiting her over in Hereford, should she decide to hold out.’

Merrily looked at the connecting door to the lounge. ‘Can I make a call before I go in? I need to... make sure things are OK at home.’

‘We have all the time in the world,’ Bliss said.

The sound of the breathing was like a recording, amplified, as though the tomb was an echo chamber, and something had reanimated the ancient corpse in there.

Most of her upper body was fused to the broken side of the tomb. Her legs were buried, and a weight of snow had collected in her lap like ice cream heaped in a bowl.

Only an inscripted slab of stone, long ago dislodged, had protected her face from the snow, and in the torchlight it was as florid as Lol remembered. Her tongue was out, and there was a spittle ring around her mouth, a dab of froth in one corner of her lips, bubbling when the breath came through.

Alive, though.

Tough ole bat.

Lol knelt down in the snow, brushing and pulling it away with both hands, uncovering a pink, quilted coat done up on the wrong buttons.

Whispering, ‘Alice...?’

All she did by way of reply was to go on breathing through her mouth, the air siphoned out in the gap alongside her protruding tongue.

Even her breath seemed cold.

She’d had a stroke. He’d seen this before – in one of the day rooms at the psychiatric hospital, a woman with schizophrenia having a stroke in an armchair in front of the TV, and her breathing filling the room. He remembered another patient going to turn up the telly.

He peered into her face: lopsided, like half of it had collapsed, her eyes closed. The colours of Alice’s face, when you thought about it, had always suggested high blood pressure.

Her’s likely wandered off. What they do, her age, minds start goin’.

Lol began furiously to shovel the snow out of Alice’s lap with cupped hands, then began digging out her lower legs, cold as marble.

The woman in the armchair, the white-coats had been very careful how they moved her. That was in a centrally heated day room.

How long had Alice been here? An hour?

She should be dead.

He bent and put an arm under her shoulders, prising them from the tomb. He unzipped his parka, pulled it off and put it around her shoulders, digging with his other hand to find the crook of her knees, until she came up in his arms, shedding her shroud of snow.

Knowing, all the time, that Dexter Harris had to be watching him from somewhere close.

44 Sanctuary

THE EASY CHAIR and the sofa had been placed at right angles under the brass-stemmed Victorian standard lamp, an intimate enclosure at the fireplace end of the long lounge. There was a coffee table with two coffees on it, served by the thickset policewoman whom Bliss had called Alma.

‘I thought I could wait just inside the door,’ Alma said to Merrily. ‘It’s a big room – I’m not going to hear anything you don’t want me to. I can sit there and read the paper.’

Merrily took off her coat and folded it over an arm of the sofa. ‘Wouldn’t it be possible for you to leave us completely alone?’

‘I still might have to keep looking in on you. Got my instructions.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Brigid Parsons said from the armchair, ‘what am I gonna do, hold her hostage? Strangle her with her dog collar?’

‘Not wearing one,’ Merrily said. ‘You’d have to garrotte me with the chain of my cross.’

Alma didn’t smile. Someone had thrown a fresh green log on the fire, making smoke and hiss and spiteful yellow flames.

‘Blimey.’ Brigid Parsons stretched out her long legs to the fireplace. ‘You really are Jane’s mother, aren’t you?’

‘If you want anything,’ Alma said, ‘don’t come out. Call me and I’ll come in.’ She glanced over her shoulder before she went out of the lounge door. The fire cracked and let go a fusillade of sparks. Brigid Parsons stood up quickly and stamped on a firefly speck on the carpet.

‘Ben Foley. Tight-arsed in all the wrong directions. I mean, come on – what’s a bag of coal cost?’ She sat down again. She wore tight jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt, with two or three buttons open, displaying a silver pendant in the form of what looked like an owl. A grey cardigan hung around her shoulders. She pushed back a strand of dark brown hair from over an eye. ‘Jane finally got you in?’

‘Indirectly. Which is the way it is with Jane. She doesn’t actively work against you, she’s just... indirect.’

‘She’s a good kid. I like Jane. She’s got a lively mind. Unlike poor little Clancy, but whose fault is that?’

Merrily sat down at the end of the sofa, near her coat. ‘Does she know? Clancy?’

‘About me? Yeah. Yeah, she does. I wasn’t going to tell her yet, I was gonna wait till she left school. I mean, I’d always found it surprisingly easy, not telling her – you walk out of prison into single-parent accommodation and a new identity, and that was kind of hard to get used to, so I used to practise on her. Telling her all about the new me before she was even old enough to understand what on earth I was on about. By the time she was two, the old me was history. Sorted.’

‘Why were you going to wait till she left school?’

‘Oh... because... Well, for a start, because Clancy isn’t like Jane, who’d see it as a big challenge. But also, if I waited till she was eighteen she’d have the option to walk away.’

‘From you?’

‘If she wanted to.’

‘Why did you tell her?’ Merrily drank some coffee. It was good. Amber Foley, Stanner Hall’s only asset. ‘Did somebody get on to you – the press?’

‘Nah, nothing like that. I mean, there was some of that, quite a few years ago – media trouble – when Clancy was little, and I had to change the name again – to Craven; when we ended up in Craven Arms, it was like a bad joke. It was a problem, for me, getting used to another surname. Less so for her. I think she thought it was something everybody had to do every few years. Excuse me, but are those cigs sticking out of your coat pocket?’

‘Want one?’ Merrily pulled out her Silk Cut and the Zippo.

‘Thanks. It’s a big thing when you first get out, not having to let one of the screws feel you up just to get yourself a fresh packet.’ She took a cigarette and Merrily lit it for her. ‘I’m sorry, I’m being flip. I don’t feel flip. I feel like shit, naturally.’

‘I can imagine.’

Brigid inhaled a lot of smoke and let it out slowly. ‘Reason I told Clancy about Brigid, and the reason, basically, that we came here, was that a kid at school – a boy – was taking the piss out of Clan because she was quite a bit behind the others. We’d moved around a lot, with my jobs, and we’d just come up from Cornwall, and she’d got behind, and this kid was like, “Oh you’re backward, you’re ESN.” Taunting her. I think he fancied her, actually – you know the oblique way they approach things at that age. How was he to know what a raw spot this was? So, anyway, she stuck a Biro in his eye.’

‘Oh.’

‘I mean, like really stuck it in. This wasn’t one of your classroom semi-accidents. Some of the kids from school would go down the chip shop at lunchtime, and she walked up to him in the street while he was eating his chips and she just stuck the flaming pen in his eye. I mean hard. Hard enough that he needed surgery to save his sight in that eye. The police were involved for a while, but there was no charge. But word gets out, obviously, and I had a call from my old minder, Ellie, who was actually the detective who’d arrested me. And Ellie’s like, what you gonna do about this? And she didn’t know the half of it. She didn’t know about Hattie. But she saw a dangerous parallel. I’m assuming you know what I mean.’

‘I think so.’ He lost an eye, Stuart, did you know?

‘So we sat down one night last spring, Clan and me, and I told her. We sat there just like this, drinking coffee – only it was a bloody sight warmer, of course. It was after dawn before we went to bed – together, like sisters. And she never went back to that school, and that was when we came down here to live with Jeremy.’

Brigid Parsons sat up and looked around vaguely, then leaned forward and tipped half an inch of ash into the grate. Merrily realized that she’d hardly stopped talking since the policewoman had left them alone.

‘That was a bit of an ice-breaker, wasn’t it?’ Brigid said.

Merrily felt very odd. It had been like two old mates catching up: the so-called woman of God and the woman who, as a teenager, had lured a boy into some derelict industrial building and inflicted upon him... was it forty-seven stab wounds?

‘They haven’t actually arrested me,’ Brigid said. ‘Or do I mean charged? Someone like me, they don’t know how to play it. It’s like asking the Queen if she needs the toilet. The red-haired Scouser said, “We’ve brought you in to ask you some questions, that’s all.” I just said, “I did it.” He’s like, what? And you could tell he’d rather I’d said, “Piss off, copper, you got nothing on me” like he presumably gets from everybody else. He looks at me like he can’t wait to get my clothes off and into a plastic bag.’

‘You told Bliss you killed Dacre?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘And did you?’

‘Unless it turns out he had a heart attack on his way down, yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘It doesn’t matter why. He’s dead, I killed him. End of story. I’m not looking for absolution. Harold Shipman’s banged up for killing about three hundred of his patients, but nobody knows why he did it.’

‘That’s because he hasn’t even admitted doing it.’

‘He’s a doctor. Those bastards never admit killing anybody even by accident.’

‘Was this an accident?’ Merrily asked.

‘Hey, listen, I’ve already been more cooperative than Dr Shipman. And I was also more selective. And I didn’t want to talk about this to you, I wanted to talk about Clancy. Can I have another of those?’

‘Help yourself.’

‘Ta.’ Brigid picked up the Zippo from the coffee table and lit her own cigarette this time, leaning back with it. ‘Merrily – that’s a very old-fashioned vicar sort of name, isn’t it? Most women clergy seem to have these monosyllabic dykenames.’

‘I’m not.’

‘I know you’re not. You’re with this songwriter guy who was mentally ill and isn’t sure where he stands.’

‘He wasn’t mentally ill. He got sucked into the system. Would it have mattered if I’d been gay?’

‘Don’t look at me like that. I was inside for ten years, hormones squirting out everywhere. Yeah, maybe a little. She’s had enough situations to adjust to.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Clancy. How much time do we have?’

‘I don’t know. I think the head of Hereford CID wants you taken over there for questioning. She may get impatient. She may send a snowplough.’

‘She?’

‘She wouldn’t want you talking to me. I think this is the only chance we’ll get.’

‘Female authority figures – like I need another one. OK, Merrily.’ Brigid gazed steadily through the smoke. ‘Here’s the situation: I don’t belong to any church, and I’m not sure what I believe. I’ve never seen the ghost of my appalling grandmother, and I’ve never felt her looking over my shoulder. Not, I should say, for want of trying. I’d love it if we could meet. Earlier tonight – Jane’ll tell you – I mean, earlier tonight there I was lying up in her room, surrounded by creepy old photos of the bitch. The biggest one, I had to clean the glass and I did that by spitting in her face, over and over again. And then I lay there under her smeary picture, looking at both of us in the dressing-table mirror. Anything happen? Did it hell. No lights, no images, no sudden drops in temperature. Bitch.’

‘Why did you want to see her?’

Brigid ignored the question. ‘Last week – you’ve probably had this from Jane – Ben and I got into a confrontation with one of the shooters Sebastian hired, and he made some contemptuous remark about Jeremy. Blue light.’

She looked at Merrily for a reaction.

‘You attacked him.’

‘Ben was very gallant. He said at least people might stop calling him a poof now. He said he could understand it after the guy nearly shot Clancy at The Nant. Yeah, I... The guy wasn’t expecting it, of course, and I think the first blow must’ve smashed his nose. What I didn’t realize until Ben was pulling me away was that I had a rock in my hand. A jagged piece of what had been dressed stone, about the size of half a brick. I don’t remember picking it up – I suppose it must have been a reflex thing when Ben and I first saw him coming towards us, and we didn’t know if he was armed. And you still don’t seem surprised.’

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘Feel free to be shocked. It still shocks me, when I allow myself to think about it. Which isn’t too often, because I have to be at least halfway normal for Clancy. Naturally, I’m not unaware that this happened in roughly the place where my grandmother smashed the skull of my grandfather. But I stress that I did not feel anything. I didn’t feel her with me. You know?’

‘Does this sort of thing happen often? I mean, is it something you have to... control?’

‘I don’t think control comes into it. I’m not even an aggressive person. I mean, truly I’m not. When I was inside, nine times out of ten – no, hell, more than that – if someone had a go at me, I’d deal with it, and not in any extreme way, you know? Only on a couple of occasions in nearly ten years was there anything... And that’s being banged-up, and being banged-up can be... trying.’

‘What about the... thing that got you in there?’

Merrily recoiled. It was like two little steel shutters had come down over Brigid’s eyes.

‘I’d heard you didn’t talk about it.’

‘What’s the point? You want some whingeing psychobabble? Psychiatrists and therapists... every so often, one would have a go at me. Sod that. I don’t make excuses, I don’t feel self-pity, and I don’t permit myself to feel pity for... them. I did my time, I deserved it, that’s it.’

It sounded like a litany, one she’d intoned many times.

‘And I’m not mentally ill like my mother, and I’m not a drunk like my gran.’

‘Your mother was—?’

‘My mother, at the age of seven, tried to kill her sister. She was rescued from a psychiatric hospital by my father. Not long after I was born, she slashed her wrists in the bath. Let’s not talk about it. I’m not mad.’

What? ‘You’re probably too sane,’ Merrily said. ‘It’s what’s scary.’

‘One of a number of things, actually.’

‘You came here as owner of The Nant?’

‘Done some homework, then. I’ve got a dossier on you, too. No, a lawyer and an accountant see to all that. I came because something had already happened. Well, two things. One, like I said, because Clancy stuck a Biro in a kid’s eye. Two, because my dad was dead, but before he died he told me what he should’ve told me years before. Told me about Hattie and what happened at the big house we used to look at through the pines, Jeremy and me, when I was a kid on holiday.’

‘Did your mother know about Hattie?’

‘She’d cancelled Hattie from her history at an early age, but Hattie came through – or something did. My mother was diagnosed as schizophrenic. My dad was a male nurse who thought he could handle that.’

‘And you really didn’t know until—?’

‘My dad didn’t know until he brought me up here to look at The Nant, and Eddie Berrows told him.’

Merrily said, ‘Clancy... the pen... was that the only time?’

‘I hope so. Look, I said the shrinks never got anywhere with me, and that’s true, but there was one guy. He was the chaplain at my last place – the open prison. He was ex-Army, and he went back into the Army as a chaplain a year or so later. He was very posh, but a bit of a rough diamond, and we... got on, you know? Mates, kind of. The last year, I’d go out for weekends and stay at his place, with his wife and kids. It was a laugh. He wasn’t holier-than-thou, and he had his problems. And he’d keep saying to me, “You need a better priest than me.” ’

‘What did he mean by—?’ Smoke from under the green log belched into the room like dragon’s breath and made Merrily cough.

‘What he meant was a Deliverance priest, and he tried to explain what that meant, but I was like, “Sod off, Chas; what am I, demonic?” He... we still stayed in touch after I came out, and he must’ve been in contact with Ellie Maylord because he rang me a couple of nights after she did, about the biro incident. I’d spoken to my dad by then, and I told Chas about Hattie, and I said – even though I hadn’t really made a decision at that stage – that I was thinking about coming back here to suss all that out, and he went a bit quiet. Well, what did he think, I was gonna be like my mother, run away, pretend it never happened? Even she finally realized that was futile. The next night he’s on the phone again: “I’m going to give you the name of someone who can help you.” I was still managing this hotel in Shropshire, and he faxed me some stuff over, and it said, The Rev. Merrily Watkins, Ledwardine. He said he knew you and he’d have a word with you if I wanted. I said, Forget it, no way, stay the hell out of it.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Chas? Charles Headland. The Reverend. You remember him?’

Merrily sank back into the sofa, an image coming up of an unforgiving, grey Nonconformist chapel below the point of Pen-y-fan in the Brecon Beacons, overlooking the valley of the shadow of death. An ill-assorted bunch of Anglican priests, most of them nervous, a couple over-confident, trying to see across the valley.

‘I was on a course with him. The course – the Deliverance course. Where we were trained to investigate the paranormal and told where to sprinkle the holy water. I knew he’d been in the Army, but he never said anything about being chaplain of a women’s prison. Where is he now?’

‘He’s out of it. He’s not even a vicar any more. He had a breakdown.’

‘I didn’t know.’ It happened. It happened to Deliverance ministers in particular.

‘He faxed me a load of guff – where you lived, your phone number, the fact that you had a daughter about Clancy’s age who went to Moorfield High School. Which was the only bit that was any use, initially. I didn’t want Clancy to go to the school at Kington in case... well, I don’t trust people, I didn’t want any risk of it getting out. So I got Clancy into Moorfield, which was a safe-ish distance away. And I did ask her to look out for a girl called Jane Watkins, if only for Chas’s sake. Not realizing Clancy was going to be practically stalking the poor kid.’

Merrily sat up.

Brigid smiled ruefully. ‘She’s quite good at not seeming to be doing it. She has a talent for appearing forlorn and vulnerable.’

Merrily remembered Jane telling her, half-exasperated, about the new girl who hung around looking all needy and alienated. Who was a year behind where she ought to be and therefore had to go into classes with little kids. How they had absolutely nothing in common, but she felt sorry for her and...

Merrily began to feel uneasy.

‘It was me who got the Foleys to offer Jane a job,’ Brigid said. ‘I don’t know why I did it, really. Except that I supposed it would guarantee Jane not becoming too fed up with Clancy, and I thought Jane was probably good for her. And Amber kept offering to pay Clancy to help out around the place, and frankly I didn’t want her around this place too much. I suppose that while I wanted to find Hattie Chancery I didn’t want Hattie to find Clancy. If that makes any sense.’

Merrily nodded, lighting another cigarette.

‘I got to know a woman called Beth Pollen, whose husband had died, and the suddenness of it had thrown her into spiritualism. She was interested in Stanner, because he’d been doing a paper on it, and... she was OK. Somebody I could trust, amazingly. So I did. Beth became the first person outside the System I’d ever just told who I was and what I’d done. And she said that if there was an ancestral problem here – a curse, however seriously you want to take that as a description – then we should address it from a position of knowledge. Between us, we uncovered a lot of stuff about the Chancerys and Hattie and what she was like. We went right back into it... right back to Ellen Gethin, who was the wife of Black Vaughan and killed this guy in cold blood after he killed her younger brother who—’

The lounge door opened a crack, and Brigid turned and waved, and the policewoman, Alma, came in. ‘Everything OK?’

‘Thanks,’ Merrily said. Alma went out and the door closed.

‘I still didn’t want to involve you,’ Brigid said. ‘I didn’t want us to have a half-arsed bloody exorcism – not after we found out about the crazy thing the Chancerys did, when the guy over the fireplace may or may not have been in attendance. I didn’t want to resort to superstition, if there was any way... I don’t know what I wanted.’

Jeremy? Did you want Jeremy?

The question had kept pushing itself into Merrily’s head, and she kept pushing it back. She was aware that Brigid had mentioned Jeremy only in passing, only in relation to some other point she was making.

The log on the fire was giving up. There were no more flames. Brigid shivered and pushed her arms into her cardigan. Her mouth was wide and generous, her eyes were warm, with deep, wry lines in the corners, and she talked like she was already back behind bars.

‘I gather you’ve got quite a big vicarage in Ledwardine. Seven bedrooms?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Just you and Jane?’

‘Mmm.’

‘I won’t dress this up. Would you have room for Clancy?’

‘What?’

‘That’s my bottom-line question. When I go away again, can Clancy come and live with you?’

‘I—’

‘Jane’s told Clancy all about you and your situation. Jane’s done a lot of rabbiting, because Clan doesn’t have much to say, except to me.’ Brigid was talking rapidly now. ‘Jane’s told her about the big vicarage, and Lol, and how inhibited you are about that – not wanting anybody to know, not wanting to be seen as living in sin, and yet you’re big on the concept of the Church offering sanctuary, and you feel guilty about all those bedrooms doing nothing, and... Look, I’m sorry to hang it on you like this, Merrily, but what other chance am I going to have?’

‘Brigid, it’s—’

‘Natalie. It’s Natalie. For the moment, it’s Natalie.’

‘It’s a big step.’

‘It could be the biggest thing you ever did. I mean it’s too late for me, right? And yeah, I feel very bad about putting this kind of responsibility on anybody. But what happens if Clancy goes into the System? What happens if she goes into the System and somebody gets hurt, or somebody dies? Go on, tell me I’m being ridiculously superstitious. Tell me, from your vast experience as a Deliverance Minister, that I’m entirely irrational.’

‘No. You’re not.’

‘Doesn’t have to be a full-time thing – I realize that if Jane thinks Clancy’s a pain in the arse now, that isn’t going to improve. I thought maybe Danny and Greta, they got no kids... I thought they could have her some of the time, to take the pressure off.’

‘That’s why you sent her to Greta tonight?’

‘It was an opportunity. I didn’t realize, obviously, how tonight would turn out – this wasn’t a set-up, Merrily, it wasn’t cold-blooded. Listen, the other thing is that money won’t be a problem. I know how pitifully little the clergy earn, and I can pay you ten grand a year, maybe a good bit more, until she’s twenty-one. It’s... all arranged.’

‘It isn’t about—’

‘What it’s about is spiritual security. And I know it’s a huge thing to ask, and I promise that if it goes wrong for her, I will never, never hold you in any way responsible.’

‘Natalie, how long have you been planning this?’

‘Is that important?’

‘And what about Jeremy Berrows?’

The door opened again, and Bliss’s head appeared. ‘Ladies—’

‘Five minutes, Frannie,’ Merrily said. ‘Please.’ Before the door had closed, she was leaning forward. ‘What about Jeremy?’

‘I’ve damaged him enough,’ Brigid said. ‘It’s best if he doesn’t see me again. Best if he truly forgets me this time, and that’s all I want to say about it.’

Her face had become flushed and against the faded brocade of the chair she looked radiantly beautiful, lit up by this powerfully incandescent, raging... sorrow.

Merrily said, ‘Tell me something: did you ever love him at all, or was he just the only man you could be around for any length of time without wanting to take him apart?’

‘That’s not fair—’

‘Natalie, we don’t have time for fair.’

‘What do you...?’ Brigid Parsons dug her shoulders into the back of her chair, pulling her cardigan tightly across the opening of her shirt, as if it was a gash. ‘What do you know about Jeremy, anyway?’

‘I’m just trying to work out, from the bits you’ve let slip, whether you came back here for Jeremy or Sebbie Dacre.’

‘You can’t—’

‘I mean, to kill him. Kill Dacre. And I don’t really know where that came from. All I do know is how perilously close you came to killing them both.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Erm, earlier tonight, Jeremy—’

Brigid Parsons stood up so suddenly that she knocked over the coffee table and both cups. ‘What’s he done?’

Bliss and Alma exploded into the room, followed by two male uniforms.

45 Fatalist

IT HAD STOPPED snowing again, but this only made the air seem colder and the sky darker. Alice was breathing up at it – a damp, soughing sound, like the wind through rotting leaves.

Alice was birdlike, but she was soaked and felt like dead weight as Lol waded through the orchard under the snowlagged limbs of apple trees that he never saw until it was too late, because he’d had to leave the Maglite behind on the tomb, along with Alice’s shoes buried in the snow.

It seemed strange that, when some snow-fuzzed twig scraped her cheek, she didn’t wake up struggling and flapping, cawing at him, outraged. He wondered if she would ever wake up again and what state she’d be in if she did, how much of her would be functioning. Salt and vinegar on that, is it, lovey?

Or would the chip shop be under new management? Get ’em served and on to the next one, don’t give ’em too many chips neither.

Lol stopped.

At the edge of the church’s own orchard, the rhythm of Alice’s breathing had fractured, the indrawn breath suspended like a roller-coaster car pausing on a peak before clattering into the long valley, and he thought, Christ, she’s gone.

He didn’t know any more about strokes than what the condition looked like. He didn’t know whether the schizophrenic woman in the psychiatric hospital had lived or died, only that they hadn’t seen her again.

Oh... God. Alice’s breath shuddered back into the night, Lol quivering with relief.

The vicarage formed in front of them, lightless, just a different texture of night. Beyond it, you ought to have been able to see sporadic lights in the hills, but there was nothing there, nothing to convey space or distance.

Lol’s hands and Alice connected with the wicket gate into the vicarage garden. He had trouble with the latch, had to put Alice down in the snow. Felt her sinking, but what else could he do? He was so soaked and freezing in his Gomer Parry sweatshirt that he could hardly pick her up again.

He carried Alice through the gate, across the lawn to the path that circuited the house and then round to the front door which, without a key, he’d left unlocked. He backed into it.

Completely black in here. Too risky to try and get her upstairs with no lights. Lol carried her into the kitchen, where the old Aga snored but where there was no sofa, not even a big chair. He was feeling for heat with the backs of his hands, holding Alice up. He knew there was a rug on the floor to the side of the stove, before you reached the window.

He found it with his feet and lowered her, and roughly rolled up his parka and pushed it between her head and the wall. Stood up and felt his way to the refectory table where there were chairs with cushions you could pull out. Collected four and took them back to where Alice lay, a small pile of clothes with a noisy pump inside. He began feeding two cushions behind her head against the wall.

Alice moaned, and he thought her hands moved.

‘Alice?’

He felt her falling forward. Keep her head up. Don’t let her swallow her tongue.

Alice said, ‘Whosat?’

‘Alice,’ Lol said, ‘if you can hear this, it’s... She wouldn’t know him. ‘I’m getting a doctor, OK? You’re safe.’

‘Wangohome.’

‘You’re safe.’

But she was still as crispy-cold as a sack of peas out of the deep-freeze.

‘Pummedown. Dexer, pummedown.’

‘Alice, I’m going to ring for some help. Just—’

‘Dowannago.’ A hand clawing at him, unexpectedly strong. ‘Pummedown, Dexer!’

‘He’s not here, Alice. It’s OK. Dexter’s not here.’

But almost as he spoke, he knew by the drifting odour of sweat and something else that he couldn’t define – a gross swelling in the air – that he was wrong.

Left alone again, Brigid and Merrily gathered up the crockery from the burn-scarred carpet in front of Ben Foley’s sour, hissing fire of green softwood. Merrily got out her cigarettes. There were only two left in the packet. She placed it on the arm of Brigid’s chair. Brigid’s face was candle-white.

‘Why didn’t I... think?’

‘Danny’s with him,’ Merrily said. ‘You know Danny – he’ll stay there all night.’

‘Can’t stay for the rest of his life.’

‘And would you have?’

‘Given the chance,’ Brigid said. ‘I thought we were meant, right from the beginning. The one thing I could never forgive my dad for was intercepting Jeremy’s letters. And – even worse – he found some way of stopping my letters to Jeremy getting out. I still don’t know who he persuaded, or how he did it.’

‘Because you did what you did soon after coming here?’

‘And he found out about Hattie. He didn’t believe... anything. And yet he obviously convinced someone that any correspondence from the area of Stanner would not be healthy.’

They sat for a while in a pool of quiet. Brigid didn’t touch the cigarettes. The bulb in the standard lamp went dim and then stammered back to life.

‘If the power goes, they’ll probably handcuff me to the banisters at the bottom of the stairs.’

Brigid found a crumpled tissue in her jeans and roughly stabbed at her eyes with it. She stared into the dismal fire, and Merrily thought of the everlasting furnace in Jeremy’s living-room range and was startled when Brigid said, ‘I never changed a thing, you know. He kept on at me to move things around, have brighter colours, impose me on The Nant, but I never touched a single ornament.’

‘Did you want to?’

‘Every day.’

‘But better it looked as though you’d never been there at all? If you weren’t permitted to stay.’ Merrily took a breath. ‘Why did he do it?’

‘It’s not for me to...’ Brigid dug her fingers into her forehead. ‘He thought he was doing it for me. That’s all I want to say.’

‘People couldn’t get their heads around it – you and Jeremy.’

‘People are crass and stupid and superficial. Educated townies, with weekend cottages, tend to venerate country folk.’

‘Touching, isn’t it?’

‘Always venerating the wrong ones. Never people like Danny Thomas and that little guy, Gomer. Certainly never Jeremy Berrows. Always the loud bastards, who know everything and nothing.’

‘Sebbie Dacre.’

‘And the old Mistress of the Hunt.’ Brigid looked up. ‘I can feel her, can you? Over there, where that bookcase is – that’s where the shelves were, where she kept the trophy stones for Robert Davies to look up at and eat his heart out. How do I know? I don’t, actually, but when I picture that scene, this is the room. When the light faded a minute ago, I thought, that’s her.’

Merrily said. ‘I... I’ve been asked to help see her off the premises.’

‘How do you feel about that?’

‘I have to keep explaining to people...’ Merrily looked at the cigarette packet, then put it out of her mind. ‘You can exorcize evil in an abstract or spiritual form. With possibly-evil people, we run into problems. You hate the whole idea of Hattie Chancery. You want someone to come along and point a crucifix and send her, screaming, into oblivion.’

‘And you can’t?’

‘Neither can I put her in a snuff-box, under a stone at the bottom of Hergest Pool.’

‘You picked up on all that.’

‘I don’t know how relevant it is. It seems faintly daft sitting here, with you in your situation, discussing fairy tales.’

‘Maybe you should talk to Beth Pollen,’ Brigid said.

Frannie Bliss took Merrily into an office behind reception, steered her into the swivel chair at the desk, on the edge of which he sat, so that he was looking down at her. She felt for her cigarettes, realized she’d left them in the lounge.

‘You want to know why she killed Dacre.’

‘Call me a completist, Merrily, but that would be nice.’

This seemed to be Ben Foley’s personal desk. It had gold inlaid bits and a small, framed photograph of Amber smiling through the steam rising from two cooking pots.

‘OK.’ She knew that what she was about to tell him would, at some stage, take a slow turn away from the truth, whatever the truth was. ‘We did a deal. She wanted two things. I... agreed to both.’

Bliss looked curious but didn’t ask. She told him how Brigid Parsons had inherited The Nant, although everyone thought that Jeremy Berrows owned it. How the Dacres had been trying to buy it for years. How it had become a focus for Sebbie.

‘And at some stage, quite recently, he appears finally to have discovered the true identity of the woman with Jeremy Berrows.’

‘Finally?’

‘He’d probably had his suspicions for a long time.’

‘The printout pinned to the sign?’

‘Could’ve been him letting her know that he knew,’ Merrily said. ‘And putting the name Brigid into circulation at Stanner Hall. Causing unease. Perhaps demonstrating how precarious things were for her. It must have gone up yesterday at the earliest, so...’

‘So we’re looking at blackmail.’

Merrily shrugged. It would do.

‘Let’s get this right,’ Bliss said. ‘Dacre threatens to expose her, explode her new identity, have the press down here in busloads unless she sells him The Nant.’ He sat down opposite Merrily. ‘Of course, the sensible thing would’ve been to flog him the farm for as much as she could get and then bugger off with the proceeds and change her identity again.’

‘You’re forgetting about Jeremy. Welded, body and soul, to The Nant.’

‘And they’re really an item, those two?’

‘Think Romeo and Juliet twenty years on. In minor key.’

‘They could always have gone off together.’

‘Maybe half of him would go. Maybe not the half she’d want.’

‘Jeez, what is it with this area? Scrubby land, lousy winters...’

Merrily said, ‘You’ve heard about the shooters going on to Jeremy’s land, coming on heavy? Those guys – from Off, right? Therefore less inhibited. I can’t help wondering if that was less to do with terrorizing Jeremy than indicating to Brigid what life might be like for him if she didn’t cooperate.’

‘Clumsy... but very Sebbie, by all accounts. No, you’re right, he wouldn’t get the local shooting club to do some of that, would he? What about the final act?’

‘Less forthcoming there, I’m afraid.’

‘Yeh, well, to my knowledge, she’s never said a word about Mark and Stuart in all these years. The Guardian once ran a story based on an interview with one of their former schoolmates who reckoned Mark tried to rape her. Inference was, Stuart too, but Stuart’s still alive and he’s gorra lawyer. Nice opening for Brigid to make a statement – but not a word.’

‘It’s as if...’ Merrily hesitated, tapping Ben Foley’s blue blotter. ‘As if the acts of violence are committed by a different person, and she isn’t qualified to comment on them. You’ve heard all about Hattie Chancery, I suppose.’

‘At length, from Mrs Pollen. I’m not allowed to be remotely interested.’

‘No.’ Merrily slowly shook her head; she felt very tired. ‘Frannie, what can I say? I know what she did, and I liked her.’

‘Merrily, I fancied her. What difference does that make?’

‘None at all, I suppose, to you.’ He had a case to build; the law was a pile of rough stones.

‘All right, what do you think happened up there?’ Bliss said.

‘Well, we can assume she met Dacre at the van – to which she still had a spare key – to discuss the final arrangements in a place where both of them knew they wouldn’t be seen together. Especially on a night like this.’

‘And he went? Knowing who she was and what she’d done in the past?’

‘Distant past. Plus, you’re talking about a man who’s not known for being afraid of much, certainly not the weather or a woman.’

Was this convincing? She wasn’t sure it would be, especially if it subsequently came out that Dacre knew who had damaged Nathan, the shooter.

‘And gets pushed over when he’s not expecting it?’ Bliss wrinkled his nose.

‘Personally, given the conditions,’ Merrily said, ‘I wouldn’t have ruled out it being, to some extent, accidental.’

‘Did you ask her?’

‘Wouldn’t go into it.’

‘What about the van?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘We gather she was entertaining a man in there? Was that Sebbie? Might she have wanted to destroy any evidence of that? It’d make it worse for Berrows if he found that out.’

‘She’s Dacre’s first cousin.’

‘Merrily, if it wasn’t for first cousins, there wouldn’t be any population to speak of between here and Aberystwyth. Anything else?’

‘Not really. If you ask her questions aimed vaguely towards those answers, that’s what you should end up with.’

‘So why – if you don’t mind me asking – did she want to see you? When you came out of there, she looked bloody awful. She looked, for the very first time, in fact, like somebody who’s about to be charged with murder.’

‘Mmm.’

Merrily looked down at the desk photo of Amber through the cooking steam. There had been only one hard and binding agreement between her and Brigid, and that was a mutual silence about Jeremy Berrows’s attempted suicide.

Had Jeremy known about the blackmail and decided – because he was afraid of what Brigid might otherwise do – to remove himself from an unsolvable equation. To make it so that she would no longer have any reason – or wish – to hold on to The Nant?

She still didn’t know, and maybe the answer didn’t matter. Merrily saw Jeremy growing old and silent, alone at The Nant, while Brigid spent the rest of her life hardening a new prison skin. It was desperately sad. She wanted to put her head on the desk and weep. And then sleep.

‘Come on, what did she want from you?’ Bliss said. ‘It won’t go out of this office.’

‘She wanted me to adopt her daughter. More or less.’

‘Merrily, you’re kidding.’

‘Doesn’t want her in care, and she doesn’t have any suitable relatives. And she doesn’t want to burden Jeremy Berrows or put him in a difficult position.’

‘Bloody hell. I mean, you can’t blame her for trying. But... cheeky cow.’ He looked at her suspiciously as she pulled out her mobile. ‘You didn’t? Tell me you really didn’t.’

She wouldn’t look at him. ‘I’m supposed to be a Christian? What was I supposed to say?’

Bliss let out a lot of breath in a thin whistle. ‘For God’s sake, Merrily...’

He didn’t ask what else she’d agreed to.

As soon as Merrily was out of that office, she rang Lol again. No answer. This was starting to get worrying. She rang Hereford Police and asked for Annie Howe. They put her on hold and then came back and said they couldn’t find Howe, would she like to call back?

Merrily found a local phone book. Prosser. Would that be a business number or private? Would it come under the name of the shop? She peered at the small print. She needed reading glasses; this had been obvious for a while, but you tried to resist it.

‘Problem, vicar?’

‘Gomer. Sorry, I was looking for Jim Prosser’s number at the Eight till Late. I need to talk to Lol, that’s all, and the phone’s... not working. I need somebody to go round. I thought maybe Big Jim, as he gets up early to see to the papers.’

And as he was big.

‘Four two one three double six, vicar,’ Gomer said. ‘But he en’t usually up till five, and I knows for a fact they has their machine on all night.’

‘Oh.’ She shut the book hard.

‘Trouble back home?’

‘It’s... possible.’

‘Like to help, vicar, but it’s been comin’ down like a bugger out there.’

‘I know, Gomer, I wasn’t suggesting anything.’

‘Means we’d have to use Danny’s tractor, ’stead of the truck. Take a while, with the ole plough on, mind.’

Merrily blinked. ‘Is that feasible?’

‘Ten minutes to get down to The Nant, pick up the tractor. ’Less, o’ course, Danny comes straight yere. But then there’s Jeremy – can’t really leave the boy.’

‘You could... always bring him here. If he’d come.’ Merrily looked over at the two police on the door of the lounge where Brigid Parsons waited. Earlier, the WPC, Alma, had escorted her to the lavatory and back. ‘Gomer, are you sure about this? It’s not been this bad in years.’

‘And all them bad years, I was in it, waist-deep.’ Gomer beamed. There seemed to be more light in his glasses than in any of the bulbs around the walls.

‘OK.’ Merrily beckoned him towards the porch. ‘I may be worrying unnecessarily, but you need to know what this is about.’

Merrily stood for a moment, watching the tail lights of Gomer’s truck disappear. When she turned round, Jane was behind her in the porch.

‘I saw you go in. Is she OK?’

‘Not really. She’s confessed to killing Dacre.’

The kid’s face was threatening to crumble like biscuit. ‘She’s covering for somebody.’

‘I don’t think she is, I really don’t.’

‘But like... how could she think she could possibly get away with it?’

‘I’m not sure she even wanted to. She’s a fatalist.’

‘But who’d want to go back to... grey walls and bitterness and bitchiness and gay sex? And dope smuggled in to take you out of it. What a terrible, totally heartbreaking waste of...’

‘Two lives,’ Merrily said. ‘I didn’t really believe in them at first, but... You said “go back”.’

‘I... heard something.’

‘From Mrs Pollen?’

‘Who told you?’

‘Bliss.’

‘It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? Bloody devastating.’

‘Who else knows, flower?’

‘Amber. That’s it. I hope. Where’s Clancy?’

‘Still with Danny’s wife. And a policewoman.’

‘I’m glad she’s not here. I know it sounds terrible, and I know what she’s been through and what she must be going through now, but Clancy...’

‘Yeah, I know, hard going.’ The squares of glass all around them in the porch were glistening and opaque, like frosted ice-trays. ‘I also talked to Matthew Hawksley.’

‘I know. I’d already told them that you couldn’t be expected to take that on, without weeks of preparation and back-up.’

They walked back into the lobby. It was quiet now, and gloomy. Merrily noticed that three of the bulbs in the chandelier had gone out, and it hung there, gleaming faintly like one of the roast-chicken carcasses an old neighbour of her mother’s used to string up for the birds to peck at.

‘What do we do now?’ Jane said.

Merrily fingered her pectoral cross, nodded at the steps to the kitchen.

‘Tell them I’ll need another hour at least.’

Jane backed off. ‘You can’t...’

‘I can try.’

‘I told them you wouldn’t. I told them you’d need... I told them you’d even have to talk to the Bishop.’

‘I probably should, but I don’t see there being time.’

Jane backed away, staring at her. ‘You look knackered.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Mum?’

‘It’s because...’ Merrily took one of Jane’s hands, squeezed it. ‘Because Brigid asked me to do two things for her and this was... maybe the easiest.’

‘Mum, I don’t think she even believes in God.’

‘She believes in love. That’s got to be nearly as embarrassing.’

‘What was the other thing?’

‘We can talk about that later,’ Merrily said. ‘Can I borrow your room to prepare?’

‘You do not know what you’re taking on.’ Jane’s face was creased up with tiredness and concern. ‘You don’t know how far back this goes.’

‘Do you?’

‘All the time you go on at me about putting myself at risk, and you’re putting yourself in the path of something... unknowable—’

‘Jane—’

‘Because you don’t want to look uncaring and wimpish. The reason you’re not waking up the Bishop is you know what he’d say.’

‘Give me a break, OK?’ Merrily tried to pull the kid closer, but Jane dragged her hand away.

What could you say? She was probably right.

‘Is that, erm, Frank?’ Jane packed herself into a corner near the porch, with the mobile.

‘I don’t know, I’m still half asleep.’

‘Look, it’s... it’s Jane. From Stanner? We met at the murder-mystery weekend? I brought the chocolate?’

‘I see. This is your revenge for being dragged out of bed to find a body.’

‘Sorry? Oh... right. Yeah. No. Listen, I’m really sorry to wake you, but this is pretty urgent. I’ll be dead straight and upfront about this. My mother’s the diocesan exorcist for Hereford, and she’s been asked to do something tonight to deal with the... presence... of Hattie Chancery. And I’ve seen the tape that Ben recorded with old Leonard, and you were there. And all I want to know is what Leonard said after Ben finished recording.’

‘What makes you think he said anything?’ Frank Sampson’s voice acquiring focus.

‘Just a feeling. And the way Ben’s behaving.’

‘So ask Ben.’

‘Well, he’s... he’s been a bit funny lately. Honestly, Frank, I wouldn’t bother you in a million years if I didn’t think this was like crucial, you know?’

‘Are you crying?’

‘Of course I’m not. I just—’

‘I’m not quite sure what you’re asking.’

‘Well, I’m not either. If I just... If I just tell what I’m worried about – I mean without going into the ins and outs of exorcism. If Hattie Chancery was in some way haunting this place...’

He chuckled. ‘I think something is, don’t you? Nobody’s had any luck there.’

‘Well, right. But if she was a presence there, what would be the significance of that? And how would it tie in with the really old stuff – Black Vaughan and everything – and the exorcism Leonard was talking about? What happened at that exorcism?’

‘But was it?’

‘What?’

‘Was it an exorcism?’

‘It was supposed to be a restaging of the exorcism of Black Vaughan, wasn’t it?’

‘But they had a medium, didn’t they? Erasmus Cookson. Why would they need a medium at an exorcism? Perhaps they didn’t want to exorcize Black Vaughan at all, but to communicate with him. Or someone.’

‘Who?’

‘Jane, I don’t feel too happy about discussing this on the phone. I think you need to talk to... do you know Mrs Pollen?’

46 The Living Dark Heart

IN THE KITCHEN, Lol was standing over Alice, blinking, focusing hard on anything that seemed paler than black, and Dexter’s voice was curling out of the hall.

‘What you gonner do now, Mister Lol?’

Alice’s breathing was much louder in here, like an old steam train might have sounded in a station.

‘Give us a song, is it?’

‘How about you go and find the doctor, Dexter?’

‘I don’t think so, boy.’

‘I’d better call 999, then.’

‘You don’t listen, do you, Mister Lol?’

Dexter’s voice had a glasspaper rasp. Lol was sure that Alice could hear all this. He laid a hand on her shoulder. It was supposed to be reassuring. It was trembling.

‘Look,’ Lol said. ‘It’s like this: she’s had a stroke and she’s wet through and suffering from exposure. If we piss about for too long, she’s going to die.’

He gently squeezed her shoulder, trying to convey that he was only trying to scare Dexter, and moved away from her, easing off his wellingtons, flexing his toes on the flags, putting his hands out to feel for the familiar and finding the edge of the refectory table.

‘How quick?’ Dexter said.

Lol stopped.

‘How quick you reckon she gonner die?’

‘I said she’d die if we didn’t get a doctor.’

‘Half an hour?’

‘Kent Asprey, that’s his name, isn’t it? The local GP?’

‘Fuck off.’

Lol went quiet. Of course, Alice had tried to tell him. Alice had told him. She hadn’t wandered into the churchyard in search of solace and then collapsed; she’d had the stroke at home, and Dexter had come back from the chip shop and found her comatose and had dragged on her coat and outdoor shoes and carried her along the orchard path into the churchyard and left her to die there of exposure. Confident that nobody would go there until well after daybreak, by which time she would be long gone, frozen to the stones.

Go on: try and think of something more rational than that.

The banality of evil. Small-time, squalid, local evil, as huge and coldly bloated as the night sky.

‘Where’s the torch, boy?’

‘Left it in the churchyard. Couldn’t manage the torch and Alice.’

‘You knob. Whereabouts you keep your candles? Where’s the matches?’

‘Don’t know if there are any.’

‘Naw, that little bitch smokes like a chimney. Where are they?’

Lol didn’t live here. He didn’t know where the candles were, or the matches.

‘Get a doctor, Dexter.’

Lol saw a slice of grey, possibly one of the kitchen windows. He saw a tiny green glow in the air: smoke alarm, reverted to the battery when the power went off.

Dexter said, ‘Her’s goin’ back, boy. Her’s goin’ back in that graveyard.’

Oh, no. No going back now.

‘You can’t put us both in the graveyard, Dexter.’

‘Landfill site for you, boy. They’ll find Alice – natural causes, no problem. They’ll never find you. You’re missin’. I got a mate in landfill. No problem. Back o’ the truck. Easy-peasy. Got no choice, look.’

‘Because you killed Darrin?’

Silence. Lol didn’t move.

‘I never,’ Dexter said.

‘Yeah, I know, it was a van, right? Like it was a lorry killed Roland.’

Alice whimpered. There was a movement like a great claw descending, then another – Dexter shifting handfuls of air to find him. He could smell Dexter now, a blend of beer, sweat and petrol. Lol moved behind the table.

‘What did Roland do to you? Come on, what? Tell Alice – you owe it to Alice.’

‘Little fuck.’ Dexter moving slowly around the table towards him, the squeak of his leather jacket.

‘He was gonna tell someone about the cars?’ Lol moving round the table on the other side. ‘All the cars you were nicking, you and Darrin?’

‘I never nicked no cars.’

‘No, OK, Darrin nicked them, because you wanted to drive them. Darrin was older, but he was smaller and weedier.’ Lol sliding between the table and sink. ‘Darrin did everything his big cousin told him because he was shit-scared.’

Thinking: magnetic knife rack on this wall, row of kitchen knives in ascending sizes, butter knife to bread knife to carving knife. Edging round the end of the table. Thinking, how could he use a knife, for heaven’s sake?

‘Bit of luck, Dexter, that crash at Allensmore... or what?’

Then Dexter went: ‘Fuuuuuu...!’ Jarring sound of wood scraping stone, jolting pain in both Lol’s thighs as the table was slammed into him, jamming him into the sink.

‘Who needs luck?’ Dexter said.

A wrenching now – the table dragged aside, and where in God’s name was asthma when you needed it?

Lol felt the breeze of Dexter’s massive fist sailing past his head. He swayed – the wrong direction, and the next blind jab was into his left cheek, a knuckle stabbing up into his eye, dislodging his glasses. He slammed his fist into where he thought Dexter’s gut was, hit leather, a metal zip.

Crap at this.

A fleshy hand around his chin, tossing his head back into the wall with a crack and a wild, white shooting pain. His glasses gone, the black air bursting. Torn from the wall, slammed down into the flags, kicked in the chest, in the stomach, the pain explosive, Lol retched. Curling into a ball, rolling and squirming until he came up against a leg of the table, his gut spasming. Christ, it didn’t take long, did it?

‘Best thing, look’ – Dexter’s boot coming in again – ‘is if ‘you just lie still and think of fucking the vicar, or whatever you want. ’Cause I en’t gonner stop, look. I en’t got no choice, you knows that, and I en’t got no time, with Alice to take back to her grave. So you just fuckin’ lie there quiet and peaceful. And you takes it till it’s over, all right, Mister Lol?’

‘Uhhh.’ Boot ripping across his face. Lol lay still – pain, fear, indignity, hopelessness coalescing in the air. He could hear Alice’s hollow breathing. Then a singing in the air – Dexter’s boot going for his head again, missing. He tried to haul himself across the floor, sensed the foot drawn back for the big one, pushed his head back into the flags, licked stone.

An indrawn breath, then a jarring crunch just above his ear, and Dexter grunting. He’d kicked the table leg, sounded like. Lol heard him backing off, boots scraping on the flags, and Lol rolled away, scrambling to his feet, bringing on pulses of pain, like being knifed all over. Fear overcoming agony. Thinking fast. Thinking Dexter would expect him to go for the main door into the hall.

So going the other way. Flattening himself into the far wall, looking hard into nothing. Across the room, the hall door slammed, Dexter cutting off the main exit.

Silence, now, except for Alice and the Aga, and Lol had the sense of Dexter moving very quietly around the room, eyes unseeing, hands poised. Figured if he could get into the scullery he could open the window, slide out into the strip of garden bordering the orchard, into the fresh, cold air and the kiss of snowflakes.

Dexter stumbled and hissed. Lol’s fingers found the scullery door.

Shut. No! The sound of him bending the handle down would bring Dexter back here faster than he could open the door, and then it would all be over very quickly because he didn’t think he could even stand upright.

Worst thing of all, even without his glasses, he could see Dexter’s shape now, blundering towards the Aga like a prowling troll, outlined in the greenish sheen of the smoke alarm light, a little glow around it, and he knew that the alarm bulb, the size of the smallest pea in the tin, would soon be as good as lighting the whole room, and Dexter would have him again. Last time.

‘En’t nowhere to go, boy.’ As if Dexter had seen his thoughts, neon-lit in the blackness.

Lol edged, very slowly, one foot at a time, along the wall to the second door. This one opened into the passage leading to the rear door of the vicarage and the back stairs. The rear door was always locked and the key kept... where? Couldn’t remember. Jane had a key, because this had once been her private front door, the way up to her apartment, until using it got to be too much of a drag.

The second door was not quite shut and Lol rested his shoulder against it, knowing that it nearly always creaked. He could get through all right, but the noise would tell Dexter where he’d gone. If he could get upstairs, into Merrily’s bedroom with its phone... if Dexter would just make some kind of covering noise...

‘When I gets you... gonner make it all hurt real bad... I promise.’

It was enough.

Lol leaned back against the door to the back stairs and, with a creak even he barely heard, he was through. He went directly for the narrow stairs. No point in even trying for the back door. Tripping over the first step and going down on his hands, and then up the stairs that way, his hands finding the next steps, his bruised stomach screaming at him to stop.

He collapsed on the top step and just... just breathed, taking in real air, letting it come out in a rush, lying on his back. Hands out on either side, feeling the rough plaster covering the old wattle and daub.

When he tried to get up, he nearly passed out with the pain. Started to slide back down the stairs.

‘Come on, boy.’

Sod it.

Lol said wearily, ‘You’re stuffed, you know that? They’ll find your DNA all over her.’

‘But mainly yours, boy. And you’ll have gone. You’ll have buggered off. They en’t gonner find you.’

Lol looked back down the steep and malformed back staircase in search of light. This was the throat down which you dropped into the belly of the house. He saw a vague smear of grey, perhaps the small window alongside the back door. He sensed that the door at the end of the passage at the bottom of the stairs was still open to the kitchen.

And Dexter, somewhere very close.

He tried to stand up. A foot skidded off the edge of a stair and he shuffled down three of them.

‘That’s it, boy. Alice is dyin’ to see you.’

Alice.

We needs it now, more than ever – the Holy Spirit, the Holy Eucharist.

Clear challenge there to the remorseless evil represented in Dexter Harris. They were going to drag him into a public place so that the born-again Darrin could publicly denounce him before God. Something in Dexter had sent him out in search of an answer to that.

‘Why the churchyard, Dexter?’ Lol croaked. ‘Why did you take the trouble to bring Alice all the way to the church? Could’ve left her in the orchard, might have been days before she was found. Why the churchyard?’

Ritual behaviour. Dexter wouldn’t understand why he’d done it.

‘Why’d you take Darrin back to the scene of the crash?’

Dexter: one small greasy cog in the huge and complex machinery of evil.

‘Poor Darrin,’ Lol said. ‘He could’ve had everything. The repentant sinner takes all. Including the chip shop.’

The voice roared up, like out of a wind-tunnel. ‘That cunt? Pretend you changed your ways, sorry for what you done? That’s how you gets out of jail quicker. He never found no fuckin’ religion, he—’

‘I think he did, Dexter. But if he was dead, who’d know one way or the other?’

‘Come on, boy.’

‘You can’t get out for the snow, anyway.’

‘I can get out.’ Dexter was back on his high, everything going his way, couldn’t lose. ‘Hey, guess what I found – nice set o’ knives on the wall. You gonner come and have a look? How about I gives Alice a little prod, see if her’s gone yet.’

... Real nasty, look. Stuck his knife in the back of my hand once. Had an airgun, shot a robin in the garden...

‘No, I’m coming down.’

‘Good boy.’

‘Bloody hell, Dexter,’ Lol said, ‘where are you from? You’re a walking curse. You’re the living dark heart of your own family. You’re a big, walking disease.’

Lol took the crooked, swollen steps steadily, a hand on each wall and his aching head way above everything – the attic, the snow-covered stone tiles – up in the teeming night sky. The last time it was like this, he was on stage in The Courtyard in Hereford, finding out that people still wanted to hear his songs after all these years. He was glad he’d done that.

By the time he was close to the bottom of the stairs, he could hear Dexter in the kitchen doorway, panting. It was rage, of course. Dexter had a limited emotional range. It was an encouraging sound, but it wasn’t...

‘Hey,’ Lol said, ‘that wouldn’t be a touch of the old asthma coming on, would it? Can you manage to find your inhaler in this light, or will you have to suck your own—?’

He reached the bottom before he was expecting it and stumbled and twisted, and the agony from somewhere in his abdomen brought him to his knees.

‘You... what are you, Dexter?’ Lol whispered. ‘What are you?’

He climbed back onto the third step and sat down, remembering the white high of just a few hours ago. Sitting barefooted on the rug in the scullery, in the orange glow of the electric fire, thinking about the woman in the kitchen with the lights turned down low. Warm love.

He closed his eyes, heard Dexter coming at him, all meat and malevolence, in the total night, and saw Lucy Devenish alongside him, with her poncho spread like bat wings.

You have to learn to open up, Lucy said. Let the world flow into you again.

47 Losers

ON THE FIRST landing, Merrily encountered a portly grey-haired man in a well-cut three-piece suit, very neat and compact and self-assured. The kind of man who sauntered. He was leaning on the banisters, gazing down the curve of the stairs, and turned as she came up.

‘Mrs Watkins.’

‘Have we met?’

He pointed at the pectoral cross. ‘Can’t be too many of those around here tonight.’

‘Another eleven and we’d be ready to take on Black Vaughan.’

He laughed. ‘Alistair Hardy.’

‘I guessed. My daughter’s just been telling me how you were in communication with an old friend of ours.’

He tilted his head.

‘In a poncho?’

‘Ah,’ he said.

‘Personally, I didn’t think it was Lucy’s style, but there you go.’

‘You’re sceptical about the spirit world?’

‘Hell, no, I’m just sceptical about spiritualists.’ She came to lean on the banisters next to him. The lighting down there was too dim; the walls cried out for huge portraits in ornate gold frames. ‘Sorry, I’m not usually this rude. I think it must be past my bedtime.’

‘Mine, too,’ Hardy said. ‘They even went to the trouble of fitting out a magnificent chamber for me. The one where Mrs Davies shot herself.’

‘Whose idea was that?’

‘I wish I knew. Have you been in there?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you something, Mrs Watkins. I’m not a timid man, as you can imagine, but I have to tell you I could no more sleep in that room than on a bed of nails.’

She looked at him: fleshy, well fed, comparatively unlined. It was disturbing how untroubled some of these people appeared – coasting through life, the greatest fear of all having been removed.

‘It’s funny,’ she said. ‘I never think of spiritualists acknowledging the idea of evil. It’s always seemed a bit...’

‘Tame?’

‘Not quite right, but... yeah. You never seem to accept the possibility of... risk.’

Hardy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Hmm.’ He smiled and nodded and walked away.

In the centre of the great island unit, there was this small earthenware crucible in which incense was burning.

Fat candles sat in glass bowls placed at the cardinal points on the worktop and all the electric lights in the kitchen had been switched off, so that the ambience of the room was one of, like, shivery motion.

Jane thought of the fire on the rocks, how elemental that had looked, how basic it had turned out to be. Antony Largo had two cameras set up on tripods, both bigger and more technical-looking than the Sony 150 he’d given her.

And which he now gave her again.

‘You’re joking,’ Jane said.

‘Look, don’t give me a hard time, huh, hen?’ Just the two of them down here. Largo cocked his head, peering into her face. ‘I never had you down as a prima donna.’

‘You never had me—?’

‘Look – a crucial set piece like this, I’d usually have three experienced people at the very least. Tonight, well, obviously Ben’s gonna be in the movie – unless we get ourselves a spectral manifestation, he’s gonna be the star, so he’s no help. Therefore, I’m gonna leave this wee implement with you. It’s fully charged. You can choose to shoot stuff or not, but there’ll only be the two of us. Maybe you’ll see things I miss – I can’t be in two places at once.’

Jane felt her hands closing around the Sony like they were betraying all her finer principles. She turned away as the first footsteps sounded on the stone stairs.

‘Not yet!’ Antony strode out, hands aloft. ‘I’ll tell you when.’

Jane held her watch to a candle. It was nearly four a.m. Antony waved her away into the shadows and moved over to the farthest tripod, bending over the camera.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘in five.’

When they came in, even Jane could tell that most of them were rigidly self-conscious, didn’t know where to look. You might have expected some small element of anticipation, but they were kind of shuffling like some ragbag band of medieval lepers in search only of relief.

Beth Pollen first, her white hair pulled back and secured with one of those leather things with a stick through it. Beth Pollen, who lost her husband and fell among spiritualists, but who had been a good friend to Natalie. Then Ben in his Edwardian jacket over a white shirt – not as dangerous as he’d seemed only hours ago, just badly wasted, the old sense of suave long gone. Amber... well, Amber was as normal, her gaze wandering to the big French stove, making sure that nobody had glued candles to her big steel hotplate. Matthew Hawksley was looking crumpled, his white jacket well creased. Alistair Hardy was in his conman’s business suit, with his hands behind his back, looking like he’d come to value the place.

Losers, Jane thought, as they took their places on high wooden stools around the island unit, their faces shimmering in the candlelight. Hardy was at the top of the table. Missing was Natalie Craven, over whom a pile of circumstantial evidence towered like Stanner Rocks.

Nobody spoke. It looked like the set-up for virtually every phoney seance scene that Jane had seen on television, but maybe this was what Largo wanted. This wasn’t a serious documentary, this was cheap, naff reality TV, coming from the same kind of factory as all that airport crap and the bollocks set in hairdressing salons.

True to his word, though, Antony didn’t make them all go out and come in again more realistically. He wasn’t invisible, but he was moving around unobtrusively enough, with another little hand-held Sony. Jane was aware of the tiny red light glowing on the second tripod camera. Long shots from two angles, then, with meaningful close-ups by Antony Largo.

He slid back to the tripod at the top of the room, refocused. Then he lifted a finger and brought it down, pointing at Ben.

Ben cleared his throat. ‘Well... good morning. And I think it’s a morning when none of us will be... altogether sorry to see daylight.’

Murmurs and smiles, Jane thinking, Buggered if I’m shooting any of this.

‘Because of the weather, there are fewer of us than anticipated, but I think the essential people are here – most of them. To be honest, I think we’ve all been... shattered by what’s happened tonight. And as we really don’t know how it’s going to turn out...’ Ben looked directly into Antony’s camera. ‘I’m sorry, Antony, I really don’t know how safe I am. I don’t know how much of this is going to be sub judice, do I?’

‘OK.’ Antony stepped out. ‘For anyone in doubt, here’s the situation. The police tell me that someone is likely to be charged with murder sometime today. The whole thing then becomes no-screen until after the trial. If I’m any judge of anything, I would see this going out at the earliest possible opportunity after sentencing. In other words, you can all say what the hell you like.’

Beth Pollen said, ‘And how do the police feel about us doing this now?’

Antony grinned, kind of piratical in the candlelight. ‘If I may quote the Senior Investigating Officer: “Anything that keeps these weirdo bastards out of my hair for a couple of hours is perfectly fine by me.” ’

Nobody laughed.

‘As long we understand where we are,’ Ben said. ‘I, um, was also given the impression that Mrs Watkins would be joining us. Is that—?’

‘I’m here, Mr Foley.’

Mum was sitting on the steps like some sort of elf. Jane hadn’t even noticed her. Instinctively, she switched on her camera.

‘Super.’ Matthew Hawksley stood up, pulling out another stool.

‘It’s OK,’ Mum said. ‘I’m not staying. I mean, very pretty and everything, but I’m sorry, I really wouldn’t feel too happy about conducting a religious ceremony in, erm’ – she waved a hand at the candles – ‘Titania’s boudoir?’

‘I’m sorry, too,’ Beth Pollen said, ‘but we were very firmly given the impression—’

‘I’m not backing out,’ Mum said. ‘I’m just not doing it down here.’

Jane noticed Alistair Hardy straightening up on his stool, looking disturbed.

Mum smiled. ‘Nor in Hattie Chancery’s room. I, erm... I thought we might use the dining room. If that’s OK. It’s a bit cold, but...’

‘Mrs Watkins...’ Antony abandoned his camera. ‘Not only is it, as you so perceptively noted, a bit too cold, but it has absolutely no bloody atmosphere either.’

‘It’s got a stained-glass window.’

‘Which, like all stained-glass windows, doesnae function as intended at night.’

Mum stood up, shrugging. ‘I’m sorry, that... that’s really not my problem.’

Antony Largo looked furious. Deep in the shadows, and in spite of Natalie and Jeremy and the whole depressing situation, Jane momentarily grinned.

‘Carry on here, by all means,’ Mum said, ‘but if you want to join me... say, twenty minutes?’

Had this been an authentic castle or even a manor house, there would have been a chapel. The dining room, with its secular stained glass, was no substitute; the stained-glass window was thick as a boarded barn door, and the air felt milky and astringent. Worst of all, when Merrily knelt on the thin carpet and prayed, it was like tossing stones down a bottomless well.

But at least it was empty and it was dark.

She said the Lord’s Prayer and St Patrick’s Breastplate. She prayed for Lol, having tried the number again and found it continuously engaged and then, when it started ringing again, had no answer. Another bottomless well.

Blank minutes passed. She stood up, half-relieved, when the door opened and Jane slid in and waited there in silhouette, hands behind her back, ten years old again.

‘You offended Antony.’

‘I suppose that’s going to screw us for getting DIY SOS into the vicarage,’ Merrily said wearily.

‘This is Channel Four.’

‘I know. And I don’t think I want to be on TV again.’

‘You could say a flat no to Antony.’

‘I don’t think we’d have time for the row that would cause.’

‘Time?’

The time is nearly up.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Jane asked.

‘To be honest, flower, I don’t really want you here at all, but if you’ve got to stay, sure, carry on with the camerawork.’

‘I mean, do you want me to do anything?’

‘Well, you could see if you could find me a jar, preferably one that hasn’t had alcohol in it, and fill it with water.’

‘You’re going to bless it?’

‘Uh-huh. But first, if you could give me a hand with these tables...’

They put on the lights and pushed two of the dining tables together under the stained-glass window. With the ceiling lights on, the glass was the colour of dried mud.

‘Why here?’ Jane asked. ‘Why this room?’

‘Oh, well, it’s kind of neutral, isn’t it? It’s a big open space, no crannies, no cupboards. Unlike the kitchen. Also, the kitchen’s too close to Stanner Rocks. I haven’t seen it in daylight, but I get the feeling the kitchen’s dominated by the rocks.’

‘Isn’t that the point?’

‘Erm...’

‘Mum, what’s the matter?’

‘Huh?’

‘Listen, I rang this guy who... knows something about the history of this place.’

‘At this time in the morning?’

‘I apologized. Basically, he told me that what the Chancerys did – when they invited Conan Doyle – might not have been a simple re-enactment of the Vaughan exorcism. They... well, obviously, they had this medium there, so they might have been trying to communicate with Vaughan... in the spirit of the new – you know – secular science of spiritualism. Like, after all, there was nothing to suggest Thomas Vaughan was a bad guy. I mean, did he even need exorcising in the first place?’

‘But why do it here? This is not Hergest Court, is it? Vaughan was never here.’

‘He said ask Beth Pollen.’

Merrily thought of Brigid. ‘Everybody says that.’

Frannie Bliss slipped in through the connecting door from the lounge. He stood there, taking in the rearrangement: the two candlesticks on the dining table, the holy water in a new decanter.

‘Catholics allowed?’

‘How do Catholics feel about spiritualism, Frannie?’

Bliss waggled a hand, conveying this way, that way.

‘You believe in it?’

‘Not when I’m on duty. Merrily, I accept that this is a private establishment that’s been good enough to accommodate the police and we’re in no position to question whatever else might be taking place here as long as it’s legal... but your selection of this particular room...’

‘Too close?’

‘Frankly, I wondered if the proximity of our... guest might in some way have conditioned your choice of venue.’

‘If you can find a room in this place that looks more like a church—’

‘All right. Just... we’re not talking about an actual exorcism, are we?’

‘It’s a word that functions on several levels.’

‘Aw, shit, Merrily, you know what I’m asking. Looking at it from the angle that the law will not – to Brigid’s advantage, I should emphasize – allow me to look at it, we have a number of close parallels here with the grandmother of the suspect. Now if, during the course of your activities here, my prisoner’s eyes happen to turn blood red...’

‘If only we had Annie Howe in charge,’ Merrily said. ‘Annie Howe simply would not believe that could happen.’

‘So what is going to happen?’

Merrily perched on the edge of one of the dining tables, now pushed back against the walls, while the chairs had been arranged in a semicircle around the makeshift altar. A little like Sunday nights in Ledwardine Church.

‘Well... the original plan by the White Company and Ben Foley appeared to be to try and contact whatever remains of Conan Doyle to find out if he really did get the inspiration for The Hound of the Baskervilles from the Welsh Border, rather than from Dartmoor. I wouldn’t mind starting with that.’

‘You’re attending a seance?’

‘It’ll be an experience.’

‘I don’t like this. Spiritually, you’ve always been... conservative?’

‘Lack of confidence, Frannie. As a teenager, I used to wear Goth frocks and black lipstick.’

‘You’re worried about something. You’re nervous. When you’re flip, you’re nervous, I’ve noticed it before.’

‘Detectives,’ Merrily said. ‘Always got to throw it in your face.’

When she walked back into the lobby, Jeremy Berrows was sitting in the chair by reception, with his scarf around his neck, staring at the lounge door like a dog outside his master’s wake.

Was anyone better placed to hold up a small candle into the heart of the darkness? When Merrily had talked to him, at The Nant, Jeremy had obviously been guarded, fearing the worst. But now the worst had happened.

Nothing to lose.

Cheap phrase, never more true.

‘The thing is, Jeremy, we’re all from Off.’ She’d pulled up a chair next to his. ‘It’s none of our business, really, and yet all the problems seem to have been caused by incomers who couldn’t leave anything alone.’

‘Incomers moved out, wouldn’t be nobody left at all,’ Jeremy said.

‘Except you.’

Jeremy smiled probably the bleakest smile that Merrily had ever seen on anyone living. It was as if his suicide had been, in essence, a success. She had a stark image of him one day, years hence, being found dead by the postman or the feed dealer, half-mummified beside the ashes of his fire. A shell, a husk; it looked as if the process had already begun.

The image arrived so suddenly that it was as if he’d passed it to her. She was suddenly desperate to help him, to pull at least one person from the mire of myth and madness.

‘Jeremy, they want me to try and... deal with whatever came through Hattie Chancery. To Paula, to Brigid...’

He looked at her. ‘They knows?’

‘Not all of them. Do you believe it came from Hattie Chancery?’

‘Come through her, mabbe.’

‘So where does it come from? How far back does it go?’

‘Where’s all evil come from?’

‘For instance – have you ever seen the Hound?’

He glanced back at the lounge door. ‘Just a shadow. A few folk seen him, time to time. It don’t mean nothin’ – no death, no disaster.’

‘But if you were a Vaughan, in the old days...’

‘So they reckoned.’

‘What about now? Is there someone it still means something to? Who, if they saw it, would feel there was reason to be afraid?’

Jeremy swallowed. ‘Dacre. The Chancerys.’

‘It came to mean the same to the Chancerys, the Dacres, as it did to the Vaughans?’

Jeremy loosened his scarf a little. ‘Sebbie Dacre’s ole lady – Margery, her once come over to our place, hell of a state – my mam told me this, I was n’more’n a babby at the time. Margery reckoned her seen it, twice. Next thing, Paula’s died.’

‘Margery connected that with the Hound?’

‘Sure to. Her... said better all round if the child died, too.’

‘She was scared of something being passed on?’

Jeremy nodded, swallowed.

‘But it didn’t affect Margery... did it?’

‘Her never hurt nobody far’s I know. But Paula was the oldest, see.’

‘But Margery believed she’d seen the Hound. And Sebbie...?’

‘Rumours. Zelda Morgan, one of his... lady friends, reckoned he seen some’ing made him real upset. And then he hires these boys from down Wales.’

‘He didn’t really think they’d bring him the Hound – dead, like in the novel?’

‘Don’t reckon he seen hisself partin’ with seven grand, that’s what you means.’

‘But he kept sending the shooters up to Stanner... and across your land. And down to The Nant, of course. Because of—’

‘Them’s the two places Nat’lie was.’

‘He connected the Hound with her? He knew who she was?’

‘I don’t reckon he knowed for sure. But... what was a woman that lovely doing with the likes of me? He wasn’t daft. He was mad, but he wasn’t daft. And I reckon he knowed the time was nearly up.’

‘The lease.’

‘Sure t’be.’

‘And he wanted the ground. The idea of someone else occupying a farm right in the middle of his... this offended him. So possibly this was some kind of crude threat, maybe aimed at Brigid. Though you’d have thought it would have made him the very last person she’d want to sell to.’

‘Well...’ A sheen of sweat on Jeremy’s forehead now. ‘I think he reckoned it was coming off The Nant, see. Paula’s land.’

‘The Hound?’

‘Whether he was really seein’ some’ing out there, or he seen some’ing that wasn’t outside of his mind...’

‘Either way, part of him would believe a death was coming.’

‘Likely.’

‘His own?’

Jeremy looked down at the table. ‘Or hers. It was him or her, I reckon.’

‘What?’

‘Thing is, see,’ Jeremy said, ‘he always figured he was out on the edge anyway, so he’d go around creatin’... situations. Trouble. And he’d get away with it – magistrate, Country Landowners. All this Countryside Alliance protest stuff – war in the fields and the woods, and the ole gentry right there in the middle of it, defendin’ what’s theirs. If there was anybody exac’ly like Hattie Chancery, my mam used to say, it was Sebbie – the huntin’, the booze... he din’t care. Never got nicked for drink-drivin’ – cops liked him, their kind of magistrate: no mercy, no sob-stories, send ’em down, put ’em away. Robber baron, Danny calls him.’

‘But when Brigid—’

‘When Big Weale, the lawyer, died and Sebbie found out who really owned The Nant, that was when he got real paranoid. And the time was nearly up, he knowed that, but he couldn’t say he knowed. What he’d do, way he was... he’d cause trouble, set up dangerous situations just to see what come out of it. Like them Welshies – troublemakers, off their patch, offer of big money. Explosive situation. Mabbe he figured somebody was gonner get killed.’

‘Then there’d have been a death?’

‘I dunno. He weren’t right in the bloody head. Bad...’

‘Bad blood?’

Jeremy’s head went down into his hands.

‘So when Natalie came back...’

‘When her come back...’ He looked up, through his fingers, really sweating now. ‘... Half of me’s the happiest man there ever could be in Kington. Other half’s saying, Make her go away... it’ll all end bad. Paula tried to kill Margery, when they was little. Now Paula’s daughter’s back...’

‘Did you know that he was blackmailing her?’ Merrily put a hand on his arm. ‘And was that why you decided to... take yourself out of the situation. Take away the only reason Brigid had for staying. You were... prepared to sacrifice yourself, in the hope that she’d come through?’

Jeremy looked to either side, back at the lounge door, anywhere but at Merrily. She was profoundly unnerved. It was terrifying how deep all this went. Rural isolation, paranoia. And a curse, like a virus in the blood.

‘And thinking that...’ She coughed, her voice so hoarse that it had nearly gone. ‘Thinking you would be the death?’

‘En’t no way...’ He started shaking his head, talking at the same time. ‘En’t no way out o’ this.’

‘Why?’

‘’Cause it goes too far back. It’s built up.’

‘How far?’

‘To the Vaughans,’ Jeremy said. ‘They’re all Vaughans.’

48 Apocryphal

DANNY PARKED THE tractor on the square – not that you could see where the road ended and the square began. It had been a close thing whether they’d have enough diesel to make it, the way they’d run the ole tractor getting here.

‘Power’s off everywhere,’ Gomer said, like it needed saying. It had been weird, Danny thought, the way Ledwardine had suddenly just appeared in the headlights, no warning, black and white buildings in a black and white night.

‘That why the vicar couldn’t get through on the phone, you reckon?’

‘Makes no difference to the phones, do it?’

Danny and Gomer stepped down from the tractor into the thick snow. It had stopped falling now, like the sky had worn itself out.

‘Behind there.’ Gomer pointed to a hedge like a white wall, just down from the church.

‘You ever have anything to do with this Dexter Harris, Gomer?’

‘Big feller in the chip shop some nights, but he never got much to say and word’s gone round he’s tight with his chips so, if he’s there, I goes home and makes a sandwich instead.’

‘Makes sense.’ Danny looked up at the windows of the vicarage, all dark except for a small glow far back in one of the upstairs rooms. ‘We putting this off?’

Without lights, what you could see of the rest of the village looked like a photo negative.

‘Don’t feel right, do it?’ Gomer switched on the lambing lamp.

Dr Bell leaned away from the lamplight, his head pitched at an angle, as if he was listening to something that no one else could hear.

‘Aye.’ He nodded, his smile wry. ‘He does urge me to point out that although he and I, at various times, both sought release and relaxation on the grouse moors of Arran, in later life he developed something of a conscience about such pursuits and came to deplore, in particular, foxhunting.’

At the other side of the table, Matthew Hawksley half turned, to acknowledge the factual truth of this for the rest of them, and then faced the doctor again.

‘Joe, did he ever shoot in this area? On the Radnorshire moors, for instance?’

Dr Bell took in two long and reedy breaths, his fingers steepled.

‘He... thinks... not.’

His voice was high and precise, and scalpel-sharp. Posh Scots, Jane thought, was like posh Welsh – explicit in its enunciation and full of this clipped authority. It was clear that Matthew must have worked with him a few times before to get away with calling him Joe.

Jane blinked. What am I thinking? Gripping the Sony 150 – real and modern, hi-tech, digital, third-millennial. Bringing it up and shooting the scene just to do something, avoid getting drawn in, the way she had been at the climax of Ben’s murder-mystery weekend in the lounge next door. This was a similar set piece, played out in the waxy ambience of an oil lamp with a frosted, globular shade – the same one that lit the scene when Sherlock Holmes confronted the Major.

And here, as Matthew had explained in his introduction, was the real Holmes, the prototype, the famous tutor at the University of Edinburgh School of Medicine who had initiated the student, Arthur Conan Doyle, into the basic techniques that Holmes would employ. Dr Joseph Bell, born 1837, consultant surgeon at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, life-long advocate of the employment of forensic observation in the diagnosis of disease.

Jane glanced over at Mum: possibly her first experience of trance-mediumship.

It was more than acting, but...

Sometimes it looked as if Alistair Hardy had lost weight – or at least as if his body weight had been rearranged. But it could be explained... If he seemed taller, that was because he was sitting up so straight in his hard-backed chair. If his eyes seemed brighter and shrewder – almost piercing – that was because he’d become fired up by what he was doing... or thought he was doing.

And if his features looked sharper, his nose more like the beak of a bird of prey, that was... well, Merrily was willing to bet it wouldn’t come over on the video.

Transfiguration. It was popular in Victorian times, but you didn’t get much of it now when people were no longer easily fooled by clever lighting and special effects. She was half and half on this – half of her thought he was sincere in the belief that something was happening; half of her thought it was a total con. She wondered how convinced Matthew Hawksley really was.

Matthew said, ‘As you probably realize, Joe, we’re trying to solve a mystery.’

‘In which case...’ Dr Bell’s lips tweaked in amusement ‘... I cannot think why you would come to me.’

Matthew smiled. Apart from this intimate tableau, the room was in shadow. One of Largo’s two static cameras was positioned in front of the altar, the other behind the semicircle of chairs. Largo himself was crouching just a few feet from the table. Alistair Hardy had declined to be filmed going into trance. Maybe he didn’t like the way his left side seemed to drop into spasm, his arm projecting from his body, his fingers curling.

Could be some kind of nervous condition.

‘Would it be possible for you to ask Sir Arthur if he ever came here?’ Matthew said.

‘Here?’ Bell snapped. ‘Where is “here”? Be more specific, man.’

‘Stanner Hall, in the County of Herefordshire, on the Welsh Border. Home of the Chancerys.’

‘Not known to me.’

‘Was it perhaps known to Sir Arthur? Would it be possible to ask him?’

Dr Bell went still. Alistair Hardy’s breathing had altered its rhythm, was going faster, and he was blinking rapidly, like REM during a dream. Merrily saw Bliss sitting in the corner nearest the connecting door to the lounge, Jeremy hunched like a hedgehog nearby. She imagined Brigid Parsons in there, perhaps asleep in a chair, watched over by the police.

‘Aye,’ Dr Bell said after a while, ‘I’m informed that it was.’

‘Did he have relatives here? Members of his family?’

There was a longer silence this time, a blurring of Hardy’s face as Matthew pushed his luck, maybe suspecting that he didn’t have much time left.

‘Was he aware of the legend of Black Vaughan and the Hound of Hergest?’

Dr Bell breathed gassily in and out through his mouth. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, as if talking to someone else. ‘Aye. Indeed.’ He turned to Matthew. ‘You touch on a most vexed issue, my friend.’

‘In... what way?’

‘I will not be...’ Dr Bell sprang up. ‘These people!’ Forefinger pointing, accusatory, around the room. ‘These people are a disgrrrrace!’

A plastic bottle of water labelled Highland Spring was sent spinning from the table. Merrily held her cross.

‘The child.’ Dr Bell’s voice had deepened. It might – if you gave any credence to this – be considered a different voice. ‘The infant. To involve an infant... inexcusable.’

You might now want to believe that this was the voice of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Hardy had his hands behind his back. There was a tremor under his breath. He looked up at the ceiling, and down at the audience. He didn’t seem to see anyone.

Until his gaze collided with Merrily’s – and it was a collision; she almost felt the jolt. She held the cross and didn’t blink.

‘They tarnish us.’ Then Hardy looked away and sat down. ‘They tarnish us.’

Matthew Hawksley retrieved the bottle of Highland Spring from under a chair and poured out half a glass, as Alistair Hardy coughed himself out of trance.

Merrily stood up. She didn’t feel very priestly tonight, in her black cowl-neck jumper and jeans.

‘Erm... did that suggest anything to anyone?’

‘Oh yes,’ Beth Pollen said. ‘I think so.’

Merrily rather liked what she’d seen of Beth Pollen. A decent woman in search of some kind of spiritual truth. To what extent she was open to deception, however, was anybody’s guess.

Merrily opened a hand. ‘Please—’

Mrs Pollen stood up. ‘The Chancerys... tried to build themselves into the fabric of the area. This area has always been overshadowed by the Vaughan legends, which have inspired pretty genuine fear over the years. The Chancerys were unlikely previously to have encountered the level of acceptance of hauntings, omens and curses they found here on the Welsh Border, even among fairly educated people. So they were saying, “Look, we’re the heralds of a new age of enlightenment, we can deal with this. By recreating the circumstances of the exorcism, we’ll summon the spirit of Black Vaughan, and then we’ll talk to him rationally through a medium, and we’ll find out what his problem is.” ’

‘But it seems to have been a fairly cobbled-together affair,’ Merrily said. ‘And they certainly didn’t have twelve priests.’

‘But, as Sir Arthur correctly remembers, they did have a baby.’

Twenty years younger than Gomer, but a lot more cautious – he’d always known that – Danny went up the drive first, with the lambing light switched off. He did not like the sound of Dexter Harris.

He stopped halfway to the vicarage front door, where the bushes on either side had been turned into great white domes. There was enough reflected light to reveal deep footmarks all over the path, as well as scuff-marks, drag-marks. Hell.

You got a weight of snow, there wasn’t nothing couldn’t happen in these villages. Used to be police stations everywhere, now the dull bastards at the Home Office, never been west of Woking, figured cops could reach anywhere in minutes. But all it took was one big snowfall...

Danny switched on the light. It told him that the front door was ajar.

‘Somebody been in,’ Danny whispered.

‘Well, don’t bloody well hang around!’ Gomer grabbed the lamp off Danny, planting his boot on the door, banging it open. ‘Lol! Lol, boy, you in there?’

‘Chrissake,’ Danny muttered, Gomer blundering past him into the vicarage. ‘Gomer?’

‘Bugger,’ Gomer said, dry-voiced. ‘Oh, bugger.’

‘What?’

‘Better take a look.’

Danny stepped up into the hall. Could just make out a door on his left, then a staircase, a passage in front of him, and Gomer standing in a doorway to the right. Over Gomer’s shoulder, in the lamp beam, he could see a big kitchen with a Rayburn or something of that order and a long table dragged to one side and, all down one leg of the table, long smears of red, unlikely to be ketchup.

‘Blood in yere, Danny.’

‘Take it careful, Gomer. I mean it.’

There was a door slightly ajar at the bottom of the kitchen.

‘Lol!’ Gomer shouted. ‘You there, boy?’

‘This en’t lookin’ good, Gomer. Don’t touch nothin’.’

‘Bugger that.’ Gomer marched across the kitchen to the bottom door, hooked his boot around the side and dragged it open.

Some kind of short passage, with an oak beam across, a door and a small window on one side, a narrow stairway on the other.

On the floor, a body.

Merrily froze.

There were present, to help lay the spirit, a woman with a new-born baby, whose innocence and purity were perhaps held powerful in exorcism.

Today, of course, it wouldn’t even be contemplated. The rule book said plainly, See that all children and animals are removed from the premises.

But that was then. And it was only a story.

‘The assumption is,’ she said to Mrs Pollen, ‘that the baby in the story would have been newly baptized, otherwise it wouldn’t be seen as a symbol of purity. In the medieval church, baptism itself was considered a primary exorcism. A baby would be christened as soon as possible because it was considered to be prey to satanic invasion, or even to actual possession by the Devil, until baptism.’

‘That’s how I understood it too, Mrs Watkins. A child who died before baptism would not be admitted into heaven. As well as having the sign of the cross marked on its forehead in holy water, its head was wrapped in a white cloth in which it would be buried if it died, as so many did, in infancy. The baby’s immortal soul was then considered to have been formally saved.’

Merrily nodded. This woman had done her research.

‘Well, then,’ Mrs Pollen said, ‘I don’t know which account of the Vaughan exorcism you read, but the one in Mrs Leather’s book does not say that the baby had been baptized.’

‘No,’ Merrily conceded, ‘I suppose it doesn’t. However—’

‘And I’m certain Hattie Chancery hadn’t been either, when her mother brought her in.’

‘Oh.’ Merrily sank down into her chair. She’d missed the obvious.

‘For heaven’s sake—’ Ben Foley’s chair legs screeched as he swung round. ‘You’re saying the baby was Hattie? How reliable is this, Beth?’

‘Well, it’s not actually documented anywhere, as far as I know,’ Mrs Pollen said. ‘It’s what the original servants said. We tracked down about four children or grandchildren of Stanner Hall staff who’d been involved in the ceremony. Three of them had heard the story, and two of them actually said their parents had been pretty jolly horrified when Bella Chancery proudly walked in with her new baby daughter.’

‘And the baby was unbaptized?’ Merrily said. ‘Do we know that?’

‘What we do know, from records, is that Hattie Chancery’s baptism was delayed because she became ill. Although we don’t have an exact date for the so-called exorcism, we know it took place in the winter of 1899, and the baptism is on record as having taken place in March 1900. I also know, from oral accounts, that Bella Chancery, during her spiritualist phase, was very dismissive of Church mumbo-jumbo and probably wouldn’t have had Hattie baptized at all if Walter – much older, more set in his ways – hadn’t insisted.’

‘For God’s sake,’ Ben said, ‘why on earth have you been sitting on this?’

‘Because of the family.’

‘But didn’t Natalie know?’

‘Clancy didn’t know,’ Beth Pollen said. ‘I also felt that talking about it... I don’t know what I felt, apart from a dreadful foreboding.’

‘But just assuming we’re all taking this on board,’ Ben said, ‘giving credence to... I mean, what are we saying? I can’t even put this into words...’

‘OK.’ Merrily moved out towards the table where Matthew and Hardy were sitting. Into the light. ‘When I was training for the Deliverance ministry, the key word was caution. You start with a prayer, build up as necessary. I’ve never done an actual exorcism of a person, and most diocesan exorcists will never do one. It’s sledgehammers and nuts. If you overreact, you can open the way for something far worse, create a situation where there isn’t one.’

Mrs Pollen was nodding fiercely.

‘So,’ Merrily said, ‘someone staging a phoney exorcism, based on a real exorcism – OK, that may be apocryphal, but the techniques ring true – someone recreating that scenario risks inviting something in. Inviting madness, if you want to look at it psychologically. Or evil, if we’re allowed to be spiritual. And evil loves a short cut. Evil takes the easy option.’

‘The easy option being the unbaptized baby,’ Mrs Pollen said.

49 Requiem

‘EXCEPT IT WASN’T intended to be an exorcism, was it?’ Merrily said. ‘Why don’t you tell us about the original owner of Stanner Hall?’

Beth Pollen hesitated as the connecting door to the lounge opened and Alma’s bulky figure squeezed through. Bliss stood up, Alma whispered something to him.

‘Can I interrupt?’ Bliss said. ‘Mr Foley, do you have any more of these nice oil lamps? Or even – dare I suggest it – a generator?’

Ben stood up. ‘Oh no.’

‘I’m afraid so, sir. It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it? Word is that all of Kington’s off.’

‘No,’ Ben said, ‘I’m afraid we don’t have a generator. There are a couple more of these lamps, and a lot of candles, and I could probably get the gas mantles going.’

‘Anything you can do, sir, would be very much appreciated.’

‘Damn. Now?’

‘Well, I’d hate to be a nuisance...’

‘All right.’ Ben walked across to the door to the hall. ‘Oh – Antony has lights, of course. And batteries.’

‘Not very much left, I’m afraid,’ Antony Largo said. ‘Best conserved, eh?’

Jane laughed cynically.

A power cut was going to cause problems, inevitably. Merrily sat and waited for the hall door to close behind Bliss and Ben Foley. At least it had given her some time to work a few things out, align what she’d just heard with what Jeremy had told her, surprisingly voluble once he’d got going.

‘Sorry, Mrs Pollen,’ she said. ‘I think we were talking about the original builder. I mean, I gather you’d know more about this than anybody, from your husband’s preliminary work. As I understand it, the architect who designed Stanner Hall for his own use had done quite a lot of work for Walter Chancery.’

‘Yes.’ Beth Pollen sat just in shadow, looking down at her hands in her lap.

‘And his name was?’

‘Rhys Vaughan. However—’

‘I know much of this is rumour, but we ought to hear it, don’t you think?’

Beth Pollen sighed.

‘I mean, as far as I can make out, nobody knows for certain whether he was a direct descendant of the Vaughans of Hergest, but he certainly thought so,’ Merrily said.

‘Well, he was a Welsh-speaking Welshman, and the Vaughans were a very important family, descended from the Princes of Brecknock, supporters of a great Welsh cultural tradition, I mean, in the Middle Ages the whole of Kington was actually Welsh-speaking. It must have been important to Rhys that when he built the house it should be on a significant site as close to Hergest as possible. He did originally try to buy Hergest Court, and when he failed he was determined to build something as impressive as Hergest had been in its great days.’

‘And where better than the famous Stanner Rocks?’

‘They weren’t very famous then, Mrs Watkins. The rare plants were only discovered quite recently. But yes, it was an impressive site and he was able to buy a good deal of land. Land wasn’t terribly expensive in those days. It all took a long time because he’d keep running out of money and have to go back to the Midlands and design industrial buildings for people like Walter Chancery.’

‘This would be what interested your husband, who worked for Powys Council.’

‘The great Welsh mansion that never was, yes. Rhys was a very romantic figure. A great patriot. He obviously loved the idea of dominating the border, as he believed his ancestors had.’

‘And working for Walter,’ Merrily said, ‘meant he had quite a lot to do with the much younger Mrs, erm, Chancery.’

‘Oh dear,’ Mrs Pollen said. ‘This is all rumour. Steve absolutely abhorred this kind of gossipy, anecdotal—’

‘It was a bit more than that at the time, though, wasn’t it? According to my information, Hattie Chancery bore very little resemblance to Walter, and the only person who couldn’t see it was Walter himself.’

‘Bloody hell!’ Jane said.

‘The word is that this was more than just a passing dalliance. Bella was seriously in love with Rhys, and when he died she was in a terrible state. Which I suppose poor old Walter put down to her being pregnant.’

‘Mum, where the hell did you get this?’

Merrily raised an eyebrow at Jane and hoped that she could make it out in the lamplight. They’re all Vaughans, Jeremy had said. Hattie and Paula and Margery and Sebbie and Brigid. All Vaughans, with all the Vaughan baggage.

‘So Bella, in her grief, carrying Rhys’s child, desperate for her lover’s vision to become reality, put the arm on Walter to put in a bid for the unfinished folly.’

‘It was almost finished,’ Beth Pollen said. ‘All that Bella had to do was bring one of her interior-designer friends up from London. Cost Walter so much money in the end that I think he had to sell one of his companies to meet the final bills. Which I suppose was the beginning of the end for the Chancery fortune. Seems to be what this place does.’

Merrily looked at Amber Foley, who sat as still as a mannequin, her face a mask of dismay. The darkness beyond the lamp-glow seemed more real, now that everyone knew it was a darkness shrouding the whole mid-Border.

‘Which brings us to the seance,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m calling it a seance, because I think the Black Vaughan exorcism thing was probably a cover story, possibly for Walter’s benefit. Would that be close?’

‘It’s all conjecture, isn’t it?’ Beth Pollen said.

‘Is it OK if I go on?’

Beth Pollen spread her hands. Of course... this was the part she would have identified with, as a woman who’d lost a much-loved husband, a soulmate.

‘If we assume that Bella read the Vaughan legend, what would have stood out?’

‘The baby,’ Jane whispered.

‘And she now had one of her own. A little Vaughan. A genuine heir to all this – the whole huge tradition. A tiny descendant of the Princes of Brecknock. And she could never admit it. I don’t know anything about Walter Chancery, but taking over the house built by your tame architect is one thing... living in your wife’s lover’s mansion with his child... very different.’

‘This is totally mind-boggling,’ Jane said.

‘And may not be true,’ Beth Pollen said, rather desperately now.

‘But she was a serious follower of the big new fashion for spiritualism.’ Merrily took a long breath, wishing it carried nicotine. ‘I think when she read about the baby, she conceived the idea of somehow – and we can’t know the details – of somehow presenting the child, Hattie, to her heritage. And more specifically, to her father. The medium...’

‘Wouldn’t the medium have given it away, Mrs Watkins? If her father had spoken through Erasmus Cookson?’

‘No.’ Jane was on her feet. ‘Because Cookson was from London. Bella had him brought in. He just had to have been a mate, someone she could trust not to pass on anything indiscreet until afterwards.’

‘But the priests...’

‘Window dressing, I suspect,’ Merrily said. ‘This is a woman who was secretly bereaved, desperate for psychic contact with her lover. Suppose she’d planned, at some stage, to leave Walter for Rhys Vaughan? Perhaps he’d told her that when the house was finished... I don’t know. We can’t know.’ She glanced at Alistair Hardy. ‘And where Conan Doyle comes in, I’ve no idea at all.’

Beth Pollen sighed. ‘We might as well try and finish the story. My researches suggest that it was Walter who invited Conan Doyle. I think... I think it was probably true that Doyle, a man with a strong sense of what was right and wrong, would have been appalled to find a baby brought into something like this. And I suppose that, being the man he was, he wouldn’t be able to rest until he’d found out what was behind it. Perhaps Bella begged him to keep quiet, and so...’

‘That was why he switched The Hound to Devon?’ Jane said.

‘Impossible to say, isn’t it? It could have been something fairly shocking that happened at the seance.’

‘The baby starts croaking in Welsh?’ Jane smiled malevolently.

‘I suppose we were all hoping something might be confirmed this weekend,’ Beth said.

Alistair Hardy was sitting upright, like Dr Bell, with his arms folded. ‘You didn’t tell me any of this, Beth.’

‘No,’ Beth said, almost distantly, and Merrily guessed that this had been a test for him. That Beth’s commitment to spiritualism was less unquestioning than her colleagues in the White Company had supposed. That Alistair Hardy had perhaps conveyed messages from her husband that she wanted to believe and yet...

Poor woman. If Hardy, as Dr Bell, Conan Doyle or even himself, had been able to reflect any aspect of a story which was unsupported by anything in print, his stature would have been confirmed, at least in Beth Pollen’s estimation. As it was, he remained iffy.

‘That’s all I know,’ Merrily said.

Beth Pollen said, ‘Perhaps it’s best if we leave it there.’

‘Is that what you want?’

‘No. We can’t, can we? There’s a woman behind that door over there who’s either a totally evil human being or a human being to whom evil was... bequeathed. We can’t alter what happens to her, but we can try to stop it here.’

Merrily nodded.

‘Hattie was unbaptized,’ Beth said. ‘I’m sure there’s a psychiatrist or a geneticist somewhere who can put it into terminology that wouldn’t cause anyone any embarrassment, but it seems likely that that night she acquired what we poor country folk can only describe as The Curse of the Vaughans.’

Merrily looked across the room at Jeremy Berrows, who knew.

‘Why don’t we see what Arthur Conan Doyle had to say? Go back to the Baskerville curse. Who invited evil into Baskerville Hall?’

‘Hugo,’ Jane said. ‘A wild, profane and godless man, in the seventeenth century, at the time of the Civil War. Hugo promises to “render his body and soul to the Powers of Evil” if he can catch up with the wench. No real parallel there, Beth.’

‘Oh, I’ve tried jolly hard to come up with one. The nearest I can get is Ellen Gethin. I often wonder if Ellen didn’t offer herself to the Powers of Evil if she was granted the opportunity – and the physical strength – to avenge her brother.’

‘But did she?’ Merrily wondered. ‘I mean, did she? That’s a very familiar story. I bet you’ll find slightly different versions all over the country.’

‘Well, yes, and Ellen does seem generally to have been a good and faithful woman, who mourned for her husband, buried his headless body, never married again. Nonetheless, what we’re looking at, surely, is a curse, a genetic disposition, what you will, following a female line. Hattie killed her husband, Paula killed herself and... Natalie...’

‘Natalie may also have been involved in the death of her cousin,’ Merrily said. ‘We can speculate for ever about where it came from, but three generations that we know of...’

‘So. What do we do, Mrs Watkins?’

The big question. Alice: We needs it now, more than ever – the big white bird.

Ancestral healing. The healing of the dead.

Dexter: Should never’ve gone round askin’ questions, rakin’ it all up.

Jeavons: It’s how we develop within ourselves – by suffering through our failure and trying again and suffering some more. We suffer, Merrilee.

The globe of the table lamp was shining like a full moon. Merrily walked over to it.

‘We can only apply actual exorcism to something demonic and believed to be... not of human origin. Perhaps that’s why, in the old story, Vaughan describes himself as a devil. Makes it legit. Hattie Chancery, however... I mean, she might not have been a terribly nice person for part of her life, but...’

The TV producer, Antony Largo – egalitarian denims, wide and sceptical smile – said from behind his camera, ‘This sounds like what my old man would’ve described as namby-pamby liberalism.’

‘No... basic Christianity.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘However, I don’t want to underplay it. What I had in mind was to wait until first light and then hold a Requiem Eucharist, for Hattie Chancery. For anyone who isn’t conversant with this, it’s basically a funeral service, with Holy Communion. And the aim, essentially, is to bring peace to Hattie and bring Jesus Christ into this place.’

Antony Largo smiled at Amber. ‘Story of your life here. Never get the ones who pay for the rooms.’

Merrily sighed. ‘Just a guess, Mr Largo... you’re not a Christian, right?’

‘Astute of you to notice, Mrs Watkins.’

‘And honest of you to admit it—’

‘Oh, I’m actually quite proud of it.’

‘—Because it kind of rules you out.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Largo frowned. ‘Rules me out?’

‘And, in fact, anyone else who isn’t a Christian. We can’t afford to take this lightly. It’s not like the Chancerys’ exorcism, with fake priests. Has to be the real thing or it’s not worth doing.’

‘The real thing?’

‘Normally, with a history like this, I wouldn’t even attempt it without back-up... maybe two other priests. There at least has to be what you might call a solid front. No weak links in the room. Anybody else unhappy about commitment? Mrs Foley?’

‘Well...’ Amber looked uncertain. ‘Ben and I had our marriage blessed in church. I was christened, I was even confirmed at fourteen.’

‘Fine. As the owners of this place, it would be good to have you both here, but you do need to think about where you stand, whether you have faith that this is going to make a difference.’

‘I’d agree with that,’ Antony Largo said. ‘I’d say you need to think very hard indeed about where you stand. For my part, after driving all this way through the white hell, I’m no’ being fucked about any further by the only organization with ratings falling faster than anything on the box. Either I’m in the whole way or I’m outta here.’

‘That’s up to you, Antony,’ Amber said quietly.

‘Well...’ Merrily went back to her chair. ‘We’ve got an hour or two to think about it. I was thinking maybe six-thirty, for seven a.m.? So that, by the time we finish, the sun’s up. Whether we can see it or not.’

50 Free Coward

THERE WAS A white linen cloth over his face.

He lay as if he’d fallen backwards down the stairs. Very narrow and secret-looking, these stairs, Danny thought, specially by lamplight, like the steps was creeping quietly up into the bones of the building.

There was this fat black oak beam across, like a great wedge holding the walls apart. This was likely where a small door had once hung to conceal the stairs, keep the cold out. Very old house, see, Ledwardine Vicarage, and this part didn’t look to have changed much since little Tudor fellers, size of Gomer Parry, was busying up and down the steps.

Must’ve had its share of dead bodies over the centuries, and mabbe this was the way they was brought out.

Not like this, mind. God almighty, but Danny felt sick.

This one, it was like he’d been flung back by a sudden angry blast of wind, his head near enough back in the kitchen, his arms thrown out, his hands reaching the walls on either side, with scabs of dried blood on the fingers of the left one.

There was blood, too, underneath the linen towel over his face – blood and other moisture that had sucked the thin cloth around his head, so that you could see the rough form of his features. Like the mould for a death mask, Danny thought, holding the lambing lamp with both hands, realizing that he was doing this because he was shaking.

Dear God, you could only take so much of this in one night.

He was already backing off into the kitchen when he saw Gomer bending down to peel away the cloth from the dead man’s face.

‘No!’ Danny jerking the lamp away in horror, him and the bloke in the darkness of the kitchen shouting out together.

Gomer straightened up, shrugging his shoulders.

‘Police en’t gonner want you to touch nothin’, see.’ Danny felt like he was chewing cardboard.

‘And you don’t want to see that, anyway,’ Lol Robinson said. ‘Take my word for it, Gomer.’

Gomer sloped back into the kitchen, feeling for his ciggy tin.

‘Can we shut that door now?’ Lol Robinson said.

When they were both in the kitchen, he closed the door firmly on the back stairs and the body, and then he led them into another room where the first things Danny saw were the amber eyes of a black cat lying on a desk, washing itself by candlelight.

‘I’ll... make some tea, soon as the kettle boils on the stove,’ Lol Robinson said.

‘That’d be good.’ Danny had a proper look at him for the first time, taking in the glasses with one lens missing, the thin track of blood from the edge of an eye to the point of the chin. Thinking this Robinson was five or six inches shorter than the late Dexter Harris, mabbe three, four stone lighter. Thinking, how? How?

When they’d walked in, Lol Robinson had been shut away in here, on the phone to the doc, checking how this poor woman was, this Alice. Seemed no ambulance could get through on the roads and the air ambulance wasn’t allowed to land at night, snow or no snow. So the doc and the community nurse had taken this Alice to the little clinic at the surgery.

The police hadn’t got through yet, but they was on their way.

‘Them ole beams,’ Gomer said, thoughtful. ‘Harder than steel girders. Older the oak, harder it gets. Walked into one once – just walking, mind, normal pace – next thing, I’m flat out, din’t know what day it was.’ He looked at Lol Robinson. ‘That be it?’

‘He... came in like a mad bull,’ Lol said. ‘Roaring. Pitch black in there, of course. When it happened... not a sound I’m ever going to forget. You know?’

Oh hell. Danny winced. Of course. Jesus.

‘Bugger me,’ he said. ‘Muster near took his head off.’

‘Something like that.’ Lol was holding himself real funny, like there was some physical injury you couldn’t see.

‘He was comin’ for you,’ Gomer said.

Lol nodding. And but for this power cut, Danny thought... Hell, this was the only feller he ever met with reason to be grateful to the power company supplying Herefordshire.

‘Right, listen now, boy.’ Gomer lit a ciggy. ‘Piece of advice yere. I reckon what happened, you was runnin’ away from this feller.’

‘Well, that—’

‘No, listen! Any suggestion of you deliberately goin’ this way in the dark, on account of you knowin’ ’bout the beam, while he en’t been this way before... Know what I’m sayin’?’

Lol smiled faintly, shaking his head.

‘Ah... now! Don’t you bloody look at me like that, boy! You gets some clever buggers in the cops nowadays – university degrees, New Labour. Feller breaks into your house nowadays, you gotter make him a pot o’ tea, order him a minicab. Bottom line: better to be a free coward than a hero behind bars.’

‘Specially as you was wearin’ a Gomer Parry sweatshirt when you done it,’ Danny said.

Then he noticed the way that Lol’s hand was shaking, on the edge of the candlelight, as he tried to stroke the cat.

‘Bastard of a situation to be in, mind,’ Danny said. ‘Real bastard havin’ to wait here for the cops, with... him in the next room.’

‘Reckon I’d’ve covered his face up, too,’ Gomer admitted. ‘Must have a dent in his head you could prop your bike in.’

Lol Robinson laughed a lot at that, leaning back against the desk.

Wasn’t normal laughter, though, even accounting for the physical pain, and Danny didn’t reckon somehow that the dent in the head was the reason Lol had covered up the feller’s face.

It was the right thing. The primary rule, always hammered home with a couple of tragic case histories by Huw Owen in the Brecon Beacons, was this: never leave without doing something. This was more than something.

After half an hour, the lamp was sputtering, its oil level running low, the colour of even the nearest walls changing from magnolia to a dingy nicotine yellow.

And the confirmed congregation for Hattie’s Requiem stood at: Beth Pollen, Jeremy Berrows, Jane – pagan Jane, for heaven’s sake – Amber and Ben Foley and possibly Francis Bliss.

She needed one more, maybe two, specific communicants to make this work.

Bliss was initially helpful. He agreed to put a Range Rover and driver at the disposal of Beth Pollen, who’d offered to go down to St Mary’s Church to borrow the Sacrament. Just when you needed another priest, the vicar of Kington, it seemed, was away; to obtain the sacrament they’d need to disturb the verger.

But there was a limit to Bliss’s cooperation.

‘Merrily, are you like totally three sheets?’

‘No, I’m serious. It’s important.’

‘God knows, I’ve stuck me neck out a lorra times for you and, God knows, I’d do it again. And you’ve been good to me. But there are places I will not go. Not with the legendary atheism of the Ice Maiden and that bastard around with his little Handycam.’

‘He won’t be there, Frannie. Neither will Annie Howe. And if the lure of money wins out, and Ben Foley shows us the door, I’m ready to hold this service in a clearing in the woods.’

‘So I can tie her to a tree?’

‘Bloody hell, Frannie, I think she’d even be allowed out of prison to attend her granny’s funeral. Don’t you?’

‘Merrily.’ Bliss stood in front of the door to the lounge, as if she might suddenly charge it. ‘No.’

This was when Mumford came in to say there was a call for her, at the reception desk.

It was coming up to five-fifteen a.m. when Jane found Mum sitting by candlelight in Ben’s office under the etching of Sherlock Holmes’s most despicable moment. She looked – face it – shattered. The crow’s-feet seriously in evidence, her fingers dancing unevenly on the desktop.

‘Mum, why don’t you like go upstairs and get some rest?’

‘It’s OK, I need to... meditate.’

‘It’s not going to be easy, even I can see that. She still thinks she owns this place. She isn’t going to want to leave.’

‘Sorry, who?’

‘Jeez. Hattie Chancery?’

‘Oh.’ Mum smiled strangely. Fatigue. Halfway out of it.

‘Who was the call?’

‘Lol.’

‘He’s waited up for you? You don’t realize the kind of guy you’ve got there, do you?’

‘The picture’s forming, flower.’

‘What did he want? Is he all right?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘You’re not going to tell me about this, are you?’

‘Not now. But I will tell you. I will tell you everything. Bear with me, flower.’

Jane felt excluded, apprehensive, insecure. ‘There’s nothing wrong between you and Lol, is there?’

‘Absolutely not,’ Mum said. ‘Can you give me a few minutes to sort something out?’

Jane wandered away and came back quietly a couple of minutes later and didn’t go in, just stood outside the door. Expecting to overhear a phone call. Instead, listening in utter dismay to the sobbing and unable to work out whether this was relief or total despair.

The phone at reception called her away.

‘Jane?’

‘Irene! Haven’t you gone?’

‘I’m not going. I was on the Net for a couple of hours. Anyway, I decided not to go to Switzerland. It’s no problem. It means Lowri can take her mate from school and I can have pizzas instead of bloody turkey.’

‘Irene, this is—’

‘Shut up, Jane. You know who this Brigid is, don’t you?’

‘I...’

‘It’s bloody Brigid Parsons. That stuff’s from a nasty little site called veryverybadgirls.com, on which sick bastards all over the English-speaking world discuss their masochistic obsession with women who like to damage men or boys. Or kill them, in most cases. You know who Brigid Parsons is, don’t you?’

‘Er... yeah.’

‘And that’s not all,’ Eirion said. ‘That’s really not all. I do not like this, Jane.’

51 Of the Midnight

MERRILY HAD NEVER felt more grateful at being permitted to cry, let out this great vomit of emotion. Because there really was no way you could sit down and reason it all out, analyse your own reactions, from the initial blinding love and relief, through the horror and the pity, all the way down to the guilt and remorse and the residual dread that settled in your stomach like sour wine.

After attempting to repair her face with wipes from her shoulder bag, she’d come out of Ben’s office to find Jane waiting with a candle on a tin tray and the laptop she’d borrowed from Matthew Hawksley.

Jane had been on the phone to Eirion whom Merrily kind of thought had gone away for Christmas. And what was he doing up at this hour, anyway?

Nothing was normal.

Jane placed the laptop on the counter at reception and plugged it into the phone socket. Merrily stood and watched the savage colours rise on the flat screen.

www.veryverybadgirls.com

‘This isn’t the important one,’ Jane said, ‘but you need to see it first.’

Ben Foley looked as if he’d been holding his head under a cold tap to revive himself.

‘We should’ve talked.’ His swept-back hair was damp and lank, his long, thin face still glowing with towel friction in the haze of the Tilley lamp. ‘We should’ve talked ages ago. Now you think I’m some kind of conman and Jane hates me.’

‘My emotions change with the wind,’ Jane said.

They went into Ben’s office. He shut the door.

‘Before you say anything, Amber’s told me about... Brigid Parsons.’

‘You really didn’t know before?’ Merrily said.

‘I swear to you I didn’t. And I’ll tell you something else – if I had known I’d still have offered her the job.’

‘Of course you would. Probably for the same reasons she’d have turned it down if she thought there was any chance you knew. What I’m more interested in, however... How long have you known Antony Largo?’

‘Ha.’ He pulled out a chair. ‘You’d better sit down.’

Jane opened the laptop on the desk, brought up the first downloaded file: www.veryverybadgirls. He looked at it with distaste. ‘Is there a name for men like this?’

‘I’m sure we can think of one,’ Merrily said.

‘A name... or a man like this?’

‘Both?’ Jane brought up the second site. ‘OK,’ Merrily said. ‘This, as it happens, was a cross-reference or whatever they call it, from veryverybadgirls. Which was how Jane’s boyfriend found it – although I think it was the other way round. He’d already checked out Antony Largo when he found out Jane was working with him. Finding this.’

the official women of the midnight website

‘Ah,’ Ben said, with no great surprise.

‘You’ve seen it before?’

‘No, I’m not much of an Internet person, but I’d have been surprised if there hadn’t been one.’

‘Seems to have become quite a cult, doesn’t it? Video editions with extra footage, all the unpleasant details you weren’t given in the original.’

‘Never liked that sort of thing myself – director’s cuts. When a production’s finished, it’s finished.’

‘I think we’re looking at prurient rather than artistic interest. What emerges from this – and from the badgirls site – is this particular producer’s... would obsession be too strong a word?... with bad girls generally and Brigid Parsons in particular.’

Ben Foley sighed. ‘Yes. I knew about that. Antony’s, ah, had a thing about her for quite a long time. Since he was a junior researcher at the BBC – Panorama or some such. Around the time we first met, as it happened. They were going to make a film about Brigid, when she was not long out of prison with a young baby. Idea was they’d follow her progress back into the world – all back views and silhouettes, of course. Antony was part of the team – very minor role, so there was no way she’d remember him, but he... fell for her in a big way.’

‘Fell for her... or what he thought she was? I mean, when you say he had a thing about her...’

‘She’s a rather beautiful woman. A beautiful dangerous woman. I’d like to think he was a little more sophisticated about it than the poor pervs on that Web site.’

‘I don’t remember the Panorama programme.’

‘Because it never happened. She pulled out in the end. Probably realized there was absolutely no way they could do it without identifying locations, at least. Current Affairs were furious – these were the early Birt years, when the pennies had to be accounted for.’ Ben shuddered. ‘Antony never forgot her, however, which I never found entirely healthy, or indeed his apparent obsession with women who’d killed men and boys. When he was making Women of the Midnight he did his damnedest to get Brigid. She wouldn’t meet him or any of his team, and she made sure they never found out where she was. So all they could do in Midnight, in the end, was tell the story – as they had to do with Myra Hindley – without an interview with the subject. Still made compulsive viewing, though.’

‘So when you invited him here—’

‘I’ve told you, I had no idea Natalie was... anything other than another woman on the run from a bad relationship. I thought my secret weapon in persuading Antony was going to be the story of Hattie Chancery. Antony saw Natalie, looked at her the way he looked at all attractive women, and I warned him off. He must’ve recognized her at once, didn’t say a word to me, but then he wouldn’t. From that moment on, he was evidently following his own agenda.’

‘Does he know you know... now?’

‘No. And I’m going to choose my... my moment. The little bastard.’ Ben struck the desk with his fist; the laptop vibrated. ‘The minute Amber told me, the truth of everything blew up in my face. That shit. He did it so well, continuing to resist my arguments, letting me woo him, finally relenting, oh so reluctantly. And now he’s going to shaft me and walk away. I want to kill him, Merrily. When Amber told me how he treated you like dirt in there... He wants to be thrown out. He doesn’t need me or Stanner any more. He’s got what he wants.’

‘Has he? I’m sorry...’

Ben stood for a few moments staring at a picture of the young Mary Bell on the laptop. ‘You’d better have a look at this,’ he said.

He pulled a dust cover away from a TV monitor with a nine-inch screen. ‘Hope there’s enough juice in this battery.’

From a cupboard under the desk, he produced a video camera like the one Jane had been using. He connected it to the TV, switched on, turning the sound down low. Video channel, cool blue screen.

‘I was rather surprised when Antony turned up tonight, having apparently driven from London after talking to Jane on the phone. I did a check with the AA – the route he was claiming to have taken was blocked in several places, even to a Mitsubishi Shogun.’

Jane looked up. ‘You mean he was... here all the time?’

‘Not here, but somewhere close. For at least a couple of days. When he came in tonight, he had his usual bag of cameras, but no room to go to. Took out what he needed, asked me – in view, as he put it, of all the thieving police around – if I’d put the bag in the safe. Naturally, when I found out what I found out, I had a poke around in his case. Found this.’

Brigid Parsons was on the screen, in close-up, unsmiling, no make-up, hair untidy. She seemed to be in a vehicle; there was a metal-framed window behind her. She was talking about her father.

‘... When he married again, I was fine with that, yeah. I mean, the poor guy deserved some kind of life. With my mother, he was husband, nurse, minder. I think he did love her at first... or maybe not, maybe it was just infatuation – and some kind of need. She was undoubtedly a beauty, and she needed him, and it was his job, what he did. I suppose there was a buzz in that, being needed... for a while.

‘When she was pregnant, it was, undoubtedly – he’d tell me this, time and time again – the happiest time of his marriage to Paula. So full of the happy hormones. But after I was born – whether it was like with her sister I don’t know... whether she was jealous, but... I do think that if she hadn’t killed herself she’d have killed me.’

Ben snapped off the sound. Brigid mouthed silently on the screen, her hands weaving about, her face contorted, those lush lips writhing in distaste, actual tears in her eyes. She wiped a hand across her eyes, and there was a streak of what looked like drying blood on one wrist, and livid, open lacerations.

Merrily turned away, to Ben. ‘He’s been here recording, with Brigid?’

‘Duplicitous little bastard.’ Ben switched off the set. ‘How did he persuade her? I don’t know. But he’s got an interview there maybe fifty minutes long, nearly all of it usable and worth a small bloody fortune. While my piffling Conan Doyle doco... well, that will never be made, will it? Now you know why I want to kill him. Amber said restrain yourself, think things out, and that’s what I’ve done so far.’

‘Have you told the police?’

He looked puzzled. ‘Why should I? Hasn’t broken the law, has he? I must say it did occur to me that if the police were building a case against poor Natalie, this was something they might like to impound – which would screw his exclusive, let the whole thing out of the bag. But that seemed rather unsubtle. I’ve told you because you raised the issue with me, and I want to be honest with you. But I’d be glad if you’d keep it to yourself for the moment. I am, I regret to say, unashamedly looking for a way to shaft him back.’

‘I’d like to ask Brigid about it.’

‘So would I, if I had the chance,’ Ben said. ‘But I don’t see it, do you? I don’t see any of us having a chance to talk to her again for about twenty-five years.’ He put the dust cover back over the TV monitor. ‘Look, this... Vaughan thing. I don’t know what to think. Is that woman...?’

‘I don’t know, Ben.’

‘We don’t even know if any of it’s true, do we?’

‘It makes a lot of sense, though.’

‘Inherited evil?’

‘Most of what I do, I can’t prove...’ Merrily suddenly felt so tired that she had to stand up to stop her head falling forward on to the desk ‘... anything.’

When she went alone in search of Bliss, Mumford pointed her to a door that she hadn’t noticed before, near the foot of the stairs. Mumford put a finger to his lips as she went quietly in to find a small room furnished as a study, with bookshelves. And Bliss slumped over a desk, with his head laid on an arm.

He sprang up instantly.

‘It’s allowed, Frannie,’ Merrily said.

‘Must be getting old. Used to be able to do all night and all the next day on black coffee and cheese-and-onion crisps.’

‘The adrenalin of crazed ambition. Listen, when Danny Thomas gets back, I’m hoping to get Clancy brought over. You could at least give me Brigid for half an hour.’

‘You were trying to nobble me before I was properly awake, weren’t you? Listen, I’ve been to me share of Requiem Masses. I know the kind of emotion all that can generate. Blood on the altar I do not want.’

‘Blood on the altar?’

‘Gwent police have been talking to Nathan – Bowker, Bowdler? Anyway, the cowboy with the big gun and the small brain who was savaged by Ms Parsons for the crime of trespassing with intent.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’m assuming this is news to you, naturally. But he’s only just back on his feet and the first thing he did, when he was able to talk without pain, was to telephone Mr Sebastian Dacre with a view to obtaining compensation for his injuries in return for his silence. The way you do.’

‘When was this?’

‘Last night, shortly before seven. Nathan said that when they were first let loose, Sebbie had talked about the woman living with Berrows. Nathan was a little coy on this, according to Gwent, but they had the feeling that it had been suggested that Nathan and his mates needn’t be overly polite to her. No suggestion from Sebbie, of course, that she might retaliate, so the lad was gobsmacked in every sense of the word.’

‘And you think this was what sent Dacre up Stanner Rocks in a snowstorm? Confirmation that this was Brigid Parsons and she hadn’t changed?’

‘We’ll be looking at Sebbie’s mobile, to see who he rang last night, who he might’ve made an appointment with. Unfortunately, the thing was smashed on the rocks, so it’ll have to go to the boffins. But, yeh, you’re right, I reckon. Puts paid to any doubts he might’ve had that the lovely Natalie was indeed his little cousin Brigid. And it gives him more leverage. Being arrested for GBH, if you happen to be Brigid Parsons, it’s not gonna be a smack on the wrist, is it? Also, think of the publicity. Sebbie gives her an ultimatum, re sale of farm... she sends him on his last journey.’

‘Frannie, would anybody in his right mind attempt to blackmail somebody known to be violent while standing with his back to a cliff edge?’

‘Who says he was in his right mind? Have you spoken to anybody thinks he was in his right mind? He was probably in an alcoholic haze. Besides, it didn’t end there. Just pushing the feller off the cliff, see, that wasn’t very Brigid. A bit perfunctory.’ Bliss rubbed his eyes. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, I don’t know why I’m—’

‘Go on.’

‘Zelda Morgan? Matrimonial ambitions?’

‘I remember.’

‘Zelda was at her mother’s seventieth birthday party in Kington, didn’t get back to Sebbie’s till just before we talked to her last night. Checked the answering machine but she didn’t get round to checking the voice-mail on her mobile till an hour or so ago when she woke up in the armchair. Bit of a shock, out comes Sebbie’s voice, being very Sebbie. “Get your” – excuse me, Reverend – “get your fat arse over here. Get the police. Fucking madwoman’s pushed me off the fucking rocks, and I can’t move.” ’

‘What?’

‘The voice of an injured man, possibly, but certainly not the voice of a dying man. Billy Grace was right. The facial injuries were not entirely consistent with a fall. She followed him down and beat him to a pulp. She’s not a pussycat, Merrily.’

‘Can I talk to her again?’

‘And would you like to tell me why?’

‘I don’t know why.’

‘About this Vaughan connection, yeh? What’s that mean to you?’

‘Frannie, this could take a while.’

‘Never mind,’ Bliss said.

At six-thirty a.m. Merrily went up to Hattie Chancery’s room with a Gideon Bible and the decanter of holy water.

Pictures of Hattie in the mustardy light. What struck her was how pale the woman had been, skin like white fish-flesh, anaemic.

There was a picture of her with the Middle Marches Hunt, which presumably provided regular infusions of blood.

Merrily shivered. Hardy was right: the entire room was a cold spot, the atmosphere thick with something she could only interpret as loathing. It could be Hattie; it could also be Brigid.

I was lying up in her room, surrounded by creepy old photos of the bitch. The biggest one, I had to clean the glass and I did that by spitting in her face, over and over again.

Merrily loosened the stopper on the decanter.

When she came down, Bliss was in the lobby, putting down the phone. There was concern in his eyes when he saw her; she must have looked something like she felt.

‘You’ve gorra tell me, Merrily.’

‘What?’

‘Oh, come on.’

It was up to Ben to tell him about the video, so what she told him, in the end, was about Lol and Dexter. What Dexter had done to Darrin and to Alice, what he’d tried to do to Lol, how it had ended and what lay on the floor of the inner hall of Ledwardine Vicarage.

Stuck out here in the snowy wastes, Bliss hadn’t caught up with the Hook inquiry. By the time Merrily finished, expressions were shifting around his face like jigsaw pieces in search of a picture. He walked away across the lobby and then back again. He stood in front of Merrily, chewing his lip, and then he turned his head and nodded at the lounge door.

‘Yeah, OK. Go in. Tell Alma I said you could have her.’

‘Well... thanks.’

It was time, then. No excuse.

As the C of E Deliverance manual kept underlining, when you conducted a Requiem Eucharist in an exorcism context, it was advisable to have at least one other priest there and preferably several. This was for a normal service, with full preparation taking place over several days. This was with a congregation of carefully vetted Christians.

With no back-up, and a congregation including two spiritualists, a trance-medium, a Roman Catholic, a teenage pagan – kind of – and a murderer, you just tossed the book over your shoulder and prayed for survival.

52 These Things Happened

IT WAS BETTER in here now. Clouded with damp mist and shadows, but the candles were glowing brightly on the makeshift altar, unexpected stars in a murky sky, and the murmured amens were rising to join hers, this soft miasma of voices, a fuller response than she’d expected.

It was as if the ritual itself was controlling the conditions, making rough but perfectly symmetrical interweaving shapes in the void. The living and the dead, and the holy. One small circle of light.

Or maybe she was delusional through lack of sleep, and this was autopilot.

Before the others had even come up from the kitchen, she’d done some sprinkling of newly sanctified water, the routine blessing of the room. Haunted-house procedure. Then a short prayer, once they were all inside. And then a repeated blessing after the Dr Bell episode and the Vaughan revelations – all this probably helping her as much as anyone, calming her nerves, setting up a receptive state of mind.

Careful devotional preparation before the service is recommended for every communicant. And also for the priest, naturally.

Oh sure...

There was a white cloth on the altar, a small chalice for the wine, a saucer for the wafers. Beth Pollen had assisted here. Merrily glimpsed Beth sitting next to Jane, staring straight ahead with focus and determination.

There seemed to be twelve of them now, including Brigid and Bliss and Alma. Antony Largo, wherever he was, had made no attempt to come in and his cameras were gone. The one she knew least was Clancy: school skirt, white school blouse, dark golden hair overhanging her eyes, her mouth sullen – eerily like the young Brigid, whose same picture, from a school photo, had been appearing in the papers for years and years.

Twelve of them. Twelve and Hattie. More holy water sprinkled in Hattie’s room before leaving. Lord God, our heavenly Father, you neither slumber nor sleep. Bless this bedroom...

Merrily connected now with that. It was the beginning. She stepped out with her Bible and her service printout.

‘ “I am the resurrection and the life,” the Lord says. “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die...” ’

We have all got a sperrit something like a spark inside we, said the old man to Mrs Leather.

The brown mud in the stained-glass window began to clear in the early dawn, suggestions of colour rising like oil in a puddle.

‘So this is a service with Holy Communion to bring peace to Hattie Davies – Hattie Chancery, who died by her own hand before the Second World War. But I’d also like us to remember, in our prayers, Hattie’s daughter, Paula, who was also a suicide, and Paula’s daughter, Brigid who is... with us.’

With the aid of a car battery provided by Ben, she’d managed to print out the order of service from Common Worship on the C of E Web site. Close to the top of the service – and lest anyone forget what this was about – she’d brought in a serious Confession that she made them repeat after her, line by line.

We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed.

There were candles on tables amongst the congregation, establishing that they were part of it, not an audience. Brigid Parsons sat next to one, with Jeremy and Clancy. Brigid’s hair was freshly brushed and some of its long-ago colour was shining through, in strands of fine gold, as if in acknowledgement that she’d soon be able to wash it all away because anonymity wouldn’t matter any more, where she was going. Her face was dark and strained, the wide mouth turned down, with lines either side that looked as if they’d just been pencilled in.

We do earnestly repent,

and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings;

the burden of them is intolerable.

Merrily had tried to talk to Brigid in the lounge, but Brigid, who had slept for a couple of hours on the sofa, had been unresponsive to everything except the idea and purpose of the Requiem. Please, just... take the bitch away.

‘This is not about revenge.’ She focused on Brigid now, in the near-white candlelight. ‘It’s not about hitting back, it’s not about laying a ghost... it’s about forgiveness. We’re looking at Hattie and what she did, and, sure, there were a lot of evil elements there... but that does not make Hattie evil in herself. We have to search, in this service, for a depth of forgiveness that we perhaps wouldn’t be able to reach in everyday life. We’re always saying, I can forgive anybody anything but That... Today, we have to say – and mean it – I can forgive anything, including That.’

In her own mind, she saw the woman in the picture over the bed, a woman with fair hair twisted and coiled like a nest of pale snakes, and eyes like white marbles. She could hear wild laughter, the smack of stone on flesh and bone.

Whoop, whoop.

It wasn’t easy, was it?

‘Fortunately,’ she said, ‘we can count on some help.’

She opened the New Testament: John, Chapter Twelve. At a later stage, she’d have to say, ‘Let us commend Hattie to the mercy of God.’

It was clear that nobody was ready yet to consider mercy. Not even Jeremy Berrows, the natural farmer, the quiet farmer, innocent face under hair like dandelion clocks. Giving Brigid an occasional sideways glance, their shoulders touching. Jeremy Berrows, who firmly believed the evil that arose in Brigid had been bequeathed to her by Hattie.

And maybe it had. Maybe Bella Chancery, led here by a twisted path of deception, had opened the door to... something that Jeremy was now being asked to forgive. Now. Within probably an hour of losing for ever his main reason to go quietly on.

John 12, verse 27. ‘Now my soul is in turmoil, and what am I to say? Father, save me from this hour? No, it was for this that I came to this hour...’

Canon Jeavons’s point entirely. It’s how we develop within ourselves – by suffering through our failure and trying again and suffering some more. We suffer, Merrilee.

If Merrily could take on Jeremy’s suffering she’d do it. She felt a low-level tingle in her spine.

Behind Jeremy was Alistair Hardy, rotund and bland and – a phrase you didn’t hear much these days, but it suited him – clean-shaven.

The psychic? She didn’t doubt it, but there was a lot to doubt. The Lucy Devenish thing, for a start. Also Dr Bell’s ‘revelation’ about the use of a newborn baby in that dubious ceremony. Because Beth Pollen had almost certainly known of the suggestion that the baby was Hattie, had almost certainly told Hardy.

Smoke and mirrors.

‘ “The crowd standing by said it was thunder, while others said, An angel has spoken to him. Jesus replied, This voice spoke for your sake, not mine. Now is the hour of judgement for this world; now shall the Prince of this world be driven out...” ’

Driving out evil, it was hard not to personalize it.

Brigid Parsons... Paula Parsons... Hattie Chancery... Black Vaughan and Ellen Gethin. To what extent could this possibly be said to go all the way back to Black Vaughan? Who seemed to have been only a fall guy, anyway. A story to blacken Vaughan and his tradition – the Welsh tradition in an area becoming rapidly Anglicized.

She looked at Ben Foley, his sleek head bowed. The original destructive haunting was said to have threatened the whole economy of Kington; Ben had been hoping it would revive his.

She wondered if she ought to have included Sebbie Dacre in this.

A Vaughan thing.

Had Dacre been told that he was a Vaughan? Did that explain his robber-baron mentality, his need to reclaim what was his, to dominate the valley? But the threat Dacre perceived was a threat from within his own family. The worst kind. Look at Dexter Harris.

Merrily looked around the cold room with its tiny spearpoint flames. Looked around, flickering face to flickering face.

Where are you, Hattie?

Of all the things she hadn’t intended to ask...

‘Dying, you destroyed our death. Rising, you restored our life.’

He’s here. Christ. He should be here.

Here now.

Everything is all right.

The tingling in the spine.

But she felt so utterly tired that the candles blurred and the faces fused. She shook herself very lightly.

Not everyone took communion. Beth Pollen was first, looking up at the rising cold blue in the stained-glass window. Then Jane, with a wry and slightly apprehensive smile.

Every time we eat this bread

and drink this cup,

we proclaim the Lord’s death

until He comes.

Brigid, when her turn came, had her eyes closed.

‘The bread of heaven in Jesus Christ.’

If she’d done this before, it had not been for a long time. Her hands came up, reaching for the chalice, the cuffs of her black shirt unbuttoned, falling back over her wrists so that Merrily could see deep, fresh scratches, the blood barely dry.

God...

She was so knocked back by the significance of this that she barely noticed Brigid moving away afterwards and Clancy taking her place.

Had Ben noticed it? Had Jane? Had she imagined it? Was it an hallucination? In the context of the Eucharist, These Things Happened. Immediately, she began to pray for guidance, for back-up, over Clancy’s dull gold hair.

Becoming aware at that moment of Jeremy Berrows, sitting back in the front row – Jeremy’s eyes wide, lit from two sides by candles. Jeremy’s eyes widening. Gazing beyond Merrily, upwards, back at Merrily.

‘The cup of life in Jesus Christ.’

‘Mum,’ Jane said faintly.

Merrily turned and saw, maybe, what Jeremy saw.

Its outline might have been conjured from the snowbanks joining the rising hills, and the jagged pine-tops, shadows against the first light. But yes, oh God, she saw it crouching there inside the leaded glass with its black haunches in the blue and its shadowy snout uplifted into the red where the first light was bleeding through. She saw it, and it was poised to bound.

No!

A coarse sucking sound sent her spinning back to the altar and the thick, dark blonde hair and the cup of life in Jesus Christ – Clancy’s hands around the chalice, Clancy’s lips...

She just stood and watched, her mind whirling, as Clancy trembled hard, as if in orgasm, and threw back her head and drank all the wine and smiled horribly up at Merrily with her black-cherry, glistening lips and eyes like small mirrors, a little candle-flame, a spark, a sperrit, in each of them.

In the very cold silence, Clancy burped and the wine spouted out of her.

Whoop.

53 No Smoke, No Mirrors

IT WAS LIKE one of those Victorian clockwork-tableau automatons that you wound up and things started happening, everything interconnected: Brigid Parsons pulsing to her feet and Alma, long practised in restraint, preventing her from moving from the spot, as Jeremy and Jane and Bliss converged and one of the altar candles self-snuffed.

Merrily was putting herself between all of them and Clancy, and shouting, ‘Baptized?’

Shouting out to Brigid, ‘Has she been baptized?’

Becoming aware that she hadn’t actually shouted it, just mouthed it, and Brigid was shaking her head.

‘That’s OK,’ Merrily said calmly. ‘That’s not a problem. We’ll see to it now.’ She smiled at Clancy and Clancy smiled faintly and vacantly back. ‘Clancy, you up for this?’

Keeping it casual. Playing down what was going to be something very big and crucial, because if this kid got spooked and took off...

Clancy didn’t respond, but she didn’t move away, just stood there like she’d been summoned to the head teacher’s office. Stood there in get-this-over mode. Not sullen or antagonistic, just tuned-out.

Which was dangerous, of course. Merrily lifted up her hands and felt a rush of adrenalin, endorphins, the electricity crackling.

Don’t get carried away. Concentrate.

‘Shush,’ she said softly bringing her palms down, trying to lower the energy level in here because it was becoming negative – too many warring agendas. It was only a hotel dining room, it wasn’t a church, nothing to amplify emotions but no weight of worship to soothe them either. A playground for Hattie Chancery and whatever moved her, but the kitchen would have been worse.

People were back in their chairs, the clockwork winding down. Some hadn’t reacted, like Alistair Hardy, watching her with his head on one side, one arm apart from his body, the hand twitching, fingers flexing. Did she need him out of here? No, let it go. He wasn’t interfering; she had the sense of a spectator, no agenda.

Merrily turned to the altar and gathered up the decanter. This was about the essentials. No fuss... stripped down... clean and simple... the basics. It mustn’t be rushed, however. Keep it casual, but get it right, because this... well, this was a medieval baptism. This was the exorcism.

She was looking into Clancy’s face now – the kid avoiding her stare, which wasn’t hard; she was a good bit taller than Merrily. But this was what Clancy did, she avoided, retreated, did not get involved. The inherited curse of negative celebrity.

In the name of the Father, the Son, the...

When Clancy finally knelt, it was like hands were pushing her to her knees. Merrily was aware of Brigid Parsons drawing in a thin ribbon of breath and the placid, unmoving eyes of Jeremy Berrows. When she closed her eyes momentarily, she could see a ring of candles, tiny snail-shells of light.

She held on to the sense of assurance rising from her abdomen, her solar plexus, as she approached Clancy and the half-perceived form of the woman standing close behind her who was in dark, nondescript clothing, perhaps a two-piece suit, bust like a mantelpiece, close-curled hair, eyes like white marbles.

Taking the stopper from the bottle. Time passing. If there was a preamble, Merrily wasn’t aware of it.

‘Do you... reject the Devil and all rebellion against God?’

Nothing.

‘Say, “I reject them.” ’

Say it, for God’s—

Clancy looked confused. Her face was damp and florid in the crimson glare suffusing the room.

‘Clancy, say, “I reject them.” Say it, if... if you want to.’

Clancy rocked, losing her balance, the words tumbling out.

‘Do you renounce the deceit and corruption of evil? Say “I—” ’

‘I... renounce them...’

The cold sun hung in the red portion of the stained-glass window, like a blood-blister. When Merrily finally drew the cross on Clancy’s skin, she almost expected the water to boil and sizzle. It didn’t.

Anticlimax. No smoke, no mirrors.

It was always best.

Clearing away the remains of the Eucharist, after the baptism and the commendation, Merrily’s hands were weak, but there was still a dipping and rising in her spine, something finding its normal level.

Jane came to help her. At some point – good heavens – she actually squeezed Merrily’s hand.

‘Hey... not bad.’

‘Erm... thanks. Only it wasn’t—’

‘Yeah, I know. It wasn’t down to you. All the same, you could easily’ve blown it. Mum...’ Jane began to fold up the white tablecloth with the wine stains. ‘Is this... I mean, you know, is this it?’

‘No chance. I’ll probably be back three or four times. Could you... leave the cloth there, flower. Call this superstition...’

‘Oh... right.’

Clancy was at the bottom of the room with Brigid and Jeremy, Bliss and Alma a few yards away, giving them some space.

Merrily shook her head as the old concertina radiator began gonging dolefully behind her, squeezing a little heat back into Stanner Hall.

‘What happened to your wrist?’ Merrily said as they filed out into the lobby, she and Brigid side by side with Bliss in front, Alma close behind.

Brigid said nothing.

‘Happened on the rocks, didn’t it? Last night.’

Brigid shrugged and it turned into a shiver. Brigid was very pale now, pale enough to faint. They moved towards the reception desk, Mumford standing there, his face grey with stubble and no sleep. In the half-light, the lobby looked as dismal as an old hospital waiting room.

‘Brigid,’ Merrily said. ‘Tell me...’

‘All right, it happened on the rocks.’ Brigid turned to her, still walking. ‘Look, I just want to say, you know... thanks. I don’t know what you did, but maybe... maybe something happened. Even I think that. And I’m not impressionable. Not for a long time.’

‘Something probably did happen,’ Merrily said.

‘And I wanted to say... if you could maybe stay in touch with Jeremy, because he...’

‘I know.’

‘It could have happened for us. We were so close to it.’

‘I believe you were.’

On the reception desk, the phone was ringing. Mumford picked up.

‘I wish I’d known earlier,’ Merrily said. ‘I wish somebody had felt able to say something.’

She looked at Jeremy, who must have said more in the past few hours than in his entire adult life.

‘And Clancy...’ Brigid said.

‘Don’t worry.’

‘I’m not going to cry,’ Brigid said. ‘It’s not what killers do.’

Mumford said to Bliss, ‘It’s the DCI, boss.’

‘Tell her we’ve had word that the snowploughs’ve been through and we’re on our way.

‘Boss—’

‘Tell her we’ve gone.’

Merrily said, ‘That was Annie Howe, the head of Hereford CID. If you don’t make a full statement she’s going to give you a very hard time.’

‘That’ll be something to look forward to.’

Merrily said, ‘You see, the point is, that wrist injury – I saw it on Largo’s video.’

Brigid stopped. Alma said, ‘Keep moving, please, Brigid, directly to the porch.’

Then Clancy Craven was there, dragging on Alma’s arm, face all twisted up.

‘You’re not taking her! You’re not! You can’t take her away!’

Clancy started to scream. Merrily saw Jane behind her, looking upset, unsure how to respond. Jeremy watching her too, with an expression that, if you didn’t know him, you might interpret as anger. Jeremy turned and walked away towards the entrance as Brigid pushed in front of Alma, hugging Clancy. ‘Clan... it’ll be OK. It... Everything’s taken care of.’ Over Clancy’s shoulder, she said to Merrily, ‘Where did you see that video?’

‘Ben has it. Ben thinks it was shot a couple of days ago.’

Bliss was listening now.

‘But the fresh blood shows it had to have been between whatever happened on the rocks and you being brought in, right?’ Merrily said. ‘Did you get it when you beat Sebbie to death at the foot of the r—?’

‘Merrily!’ Bliss snarled.

Brigid said, ‘What?’

‘For fuck’s sake—’ Bliss spun round, ran to the door to Ben’s office behind reception, flung it open. ‘In! In there now!’

54 Reichenbach

WHEN BLISS SAID, ‘Clancy, would you and Jane like to fetch us all some of Mrs Foley’s incredible coffee?’ Clancy looked at her mother like this was some cheap trick and when she returned with the coffee all the police cars would have gone from the forecourt.

‘I promise you, Clancy,’ Bliss said, ‘we won’t leave the premises without you get another chance to see your mum, yeh?’

Clancy wouldn’t look at him but she went off with Jane. She hadn’t looked at Merrily either since the water had dried on her forehead. This could take months – years – of aftercare. It wasn’t magic.

Merrily put a new cigarette packet, open, on the desk, with the Zippo. On the front of the packet it said Smokers Die Young. Alma brought in a third chair and an ashtray, and Merrily sat facing Brigid, watching her smoke with a cautious relish, as if she was already banged-up.

‘Right.’ Bliss sat next to Merrily. ‘Where’s this video?’

‘You don’t need to see it now, Francis. Its existence is enough.’

‘Men just bloody lie to you all the time,’ Brigid said.

‘Meaning Largo?’

‘Some of us, on the other hand,’ Bliss said, ‘though we may seem like crass twats only looking for a result, have a profoundly spiritual core. Some of us might even be deeply shocked to think that a woman who’s just left a feller horribly unfaced should allow herself to be whisked away to be interviewed about it for the box. Something doesn’t ring true, in other words, Brigid.’

‘Could I talk to Merrily on her own?’

‘No, but you can talk to DCI Howe, who is also a woman – so I’ve been told. Can we cut the crap? I sometimes feel that a service like the one we’ve just attended can blow away the need for an awful lot of unnecessary evasion. Which goes for you, too, Reverend. In fact, you can start us off.’

‘OK.’ Merrily took a cigarette.

‘And make it quick while I can still breathe in here.’

‘Well, essentially, Antony Largo has been after Brigid – in at least one sense, maybe more – since he was a young researcher with the BBC. Antony Largo likes – sorry, Brigid – vicious women. He made a well-known documentary called Women of the Midnight, which—’

Bliss leaned into the smoke. ‘He made that?’

‘While still in his twenties, apparently. And never looked back.’

‘As I recall, Merrily, that programme caused a flap by being a bit... well, it looked closely at the sexual side of things, didn’t it? We heard from past lovers, in considerable detail.’

‘And you can apparently get the rest of the detail on video through the Internet, as long as you claim to be over twenty-one.’

‘Well, well,’ Bliss said. ‘So you knew Mr Largo then, Brigid.’

‘No, I didn’t, actually. I didn’t even remember his name. Only anoraks know the names of TV producers. Didn’t recognize him, either, when Ben brought him in, though I’d apparently met him at Ellie Maylord’s, when these guys were after me for Panorama. As he reminded me the other week.’

‘In what circumstances did he remind you?’

‘After he was here with Ben that first time, he didn’t go back to London. He booked into the Green Dragon at Hereford, and he phoned me.’

‘Must’ve been a shock, Brigid.’

‘Yeah, it was. He said could I meet him. He said as soon as he saw me he was thinking, like, what if Ben finds out?’

‘You’d appreciate talking to someone who really cared.’

‘You wouldn’t believe some of the men I’ve met who really cared,’ Brigid said.

‘I may even have arrested a couple. So, you met Mr Largo?’

‘I met him in the camper van.’

‘Aha.’

‘Was a refuge for me, that van.’

‘I thought you’d sold it to the nature lads.’

‘Lent it. Said I might need it back at some stage.’

‘Oh?’

‘In my situation, the kind of refuge you can drive away is sometimes useful. It’s also better if you don’t keep it at home. That way, visiting reporters, or other people you don’t want to get involved with, don’t get to see it in advance. I have bad memories of driving out of Looe at the head of a cavalcade.’

‘So you entertained Mr Largo in your camper van, even though—’

‘In this case, because I didn’t dare meet him anywhere public, and I wasn’t having him anywhere near The Nant. And I didn’t entertain him, thank you.’

‘You can’t blame people for embroidering – man and a woman in a camper van on a remote clifftop. And with what we know of his tastes...’

‘That was on his second visit, I assume. The first time he suggested I might like to cooperate in a sensitively made documentary. The second time, it was to offer me a percentage. Which he said could run to well over a hundred grand, including US rights.’

Bliss leaned back, eyebrows going up. ‘Tempting?’

‘Not to me. This might be difficult for you to get your head around, but money doesn’t mean that much to me or Jeremy. As long as we’re in a position to earn enough to keep going.’

‘Money means a certain amount to everybody, Brigid.’

‘Ask Merrily what means more.’

‘Peace of mind,’ Merrily said. ‘In a very particular sense.’

‘Did you like Mr Largo?’ Bliss asked.

‘I didn’t feel very happy being alone with him, if that’s what you mean.’

‘In what way?’

‘Buy the video, Frannie,’ Merrily said.

Brigid smiled and extracted another cigarette.

‘You turned him down?’ Bliss asked.

‘I put him off. You see, the danger here is that this was one of a very small number of people who would actually have been close enough to me as an adult to recognize me. Only, things had changed a lot in the last couple of months. I’d found a man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and he was living in a place he needed to spend the rest of his life in.’

‘Having you around could be pressure for a serious introvert,’ Merrily said. ‘It’s a big secret to keep.’

‘I think we’d’ve started to tell local people in time – the ones who could handle it. Guys like Danny Thomas and Greta. You get a group who know, and you have this level of protection that you wouldn’t get in a more populated area.’

‘True. They like to know all about you, but once they do, they can be very loyal. And very good at secrets, of course.’

‘Sometimes too good at secrets.’ Brigid lit her cigarette. ‘I’ll buy you another packet of these before they take me away.’

Merrily smiled. She was getting that feeling in the spine again.

‘You led him on?’ Bliss said.

‘I said I’d need an absolute assurance that my appearance would be disguised and also my location, and I didn’t think he was going to be able to promise that. I also said that if I did it I wouldn’t want any money, but I would want right of veto or whatever. You see, I’ve never seen Women of the Midnight. It’s not the kind of thing I watch, strangely enough. He said a solid, sensitive programme like he was planning would take the heat off and also allow me to have my say. Well, I didn’t want my say, but I didn’t want him shopping me, either. Not yet.’

‘Did you never think of going to court for special protection?’ Merrily asked. ‘Make it so the media weren’t allowed to identify you, for Clancy’s sake?’

‘I didn’t want special protection. I didn’t deserve special protection. Clancy, maybe.’

Bliss said, ‘Can we talk about Sebbie Dacre?’

‘I’ll only go so far.’

‘He was blackmailing you, right?’

Brigid laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘He wouldn’t have the... I dunno what word I’m looking for, but he wouldn’t have it. I’m sorry. I didn’t want him to die.’

‘You killed him, Brigid.’

‘I wanted...’ Brigid blew out a lot of smoke, turning away. ‘What’s the bloody point?’ The smoke drifted up and mingled with the smoke around the muzzle flash from Sherlock Holmes’s pistol in the picture.

‘Please,’ Merrily said, ‘don’t stop now.’

‘Look – he was out of it, he really was. Hell, there’s enough insanity in my family for that to surprise nobody. Somebody told him about this Web site where all these saddos were drooling over what women had done to men, and he printed stuff off, pinned one to the sign at the bottom of the drive so I’d know that he knew. He was dangerous. He was a risk. Sure. At some stage he was going to tell somebody who’d take him seriously. But he still didn’t know, for certain.’

‘You think he was genuinely mentally ill?’ Merrily said.

‘I think it was the booze, mainly. The toxic combination of booze and being a Chancery.’ Brigid flicked her cigarette towards Bliss. ‘What’s that sound like? I don’t know why I’m bothering – this guy isn’t going to believe the half of it.’

‘Try him. He’s a Catholic.’

‘But I just want to make it clear – again – that I’ve never... I am never gonna blame whatever I’ve done on being a victim – my mother’s daughter, Hattie’s granddaughter. I will live with being a bad and vicious person – a monster – and getting punished for it, rather than take one miserable step down Sebastian’s road. I’ll be an old lag with a filthy mouth. I’ll be an evil monster for Sun readers to wish dead and sick kids to wank over, and that’s it.’

‘And yet you came here to find out about it. You cooperated with Beth Pollen and the White Company...’

‘It was about closing doors, Merrily. And it was about Clancy – I’ve explained all that. It wasn’t about me.’

‘You know,’ Merrily said. ‘I don’t think I’m buying that. You understand—’

‘No, listen—’

‘You understand too much about Sebbie’s problems. And he denied it too, didn’t he? I mean, people who talked to him—’

‘If you talked to him, you’d think he didn’t give a toss. “Load of old drivel” – I’ve listened to him in the pub, spouting off – maybe for my benefit, just in case I was who he suspected I might be. Just so I’d know he wasn’t scared of anything, particularly me, and the past.’

‘Why scared of you?’ Merrily said.

‘Not for me to say. Ask Jeremy.’

‘Because your mother tried to kill his mother when they were little? Because Ellen Gethin—’

‘Why did he come to the van last night?’ Bliss said. ‘And why were you there?’

Merrily said, not quite knowing where the question came from, ‘You were trying to help him, weren’t you?’

‘Where did you get that idea?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I was...’ Brigid ground out her cigarette in the metal ashtray. ‘He wasn’t blackmailing me, OK? He was saying to me, “I’ve been expecting you, and you’re... trouble.” Something like that. I was a threat. Jeremy said he’d been seeing the Hound of Hergest, like other drunks see pink elephants. He never said that to me. He said he wanted Brigid Parsons to sell him The Nant, and he’d give a fair price for it, and that would be the end of a long, bad period. He thought I could take Jeremy with me and buy him another farm a bloody long way away. He didn’t actually try to blackmail me... not then. But I didn’t want to go, you see, and Jeremy... nothing was going to get Jeremy out of The Nant, so I... said why didn’t we meet?’

‘Usual venue,’ Bliss said.

‘Look, I honestly didn’t think. How naive was that, for someone like me? See, the thing is, we were never going to like each other, but he wasn’t going anywhere, he owned everything in a big circle around The Nant, and he could make things very difficult if he wanted to – I mean he gave us a taste of that with the hired guns, like this Wild West situation. I still thought there had to be a way we could coexist.’

‘What were you gonna offer him, Brigid?’

‘Not The Nant and not sex. Peace of mind? A way of making peace with the past? On one level, that seemed very naive, but, yeah, it was worth a try.’

‘Good God.’ Merrily sat up. ‘You were going to invite him to the White Company gig.’

‘I did. I told him there were some people who’d like to help him with his... paranoia. I said we should attack it. As a family unit. Bite back.’

Merrily nodded. ‘You and him.’

‘And the White Company. And you, maybe. Deal with it – for Clancy’s sake. And by then, I’d also been made aware that I needed help on a personal level if I was going to survive here.’

‘Nathan?’

‘That was a shock. It happened quicker than I could think.’

Bliss leaned back, arms folded. ‘What exactly happened with Sebbie, Brigid?’

‘In Sebbie’s view of things,’ Merrily said, ‘there would be only one reason for a direct female descendant of Hattie Chancery to invite a man to Stanner Rocks.’

‘I thought we’d got way beyond all that,’ Brigid said. ‘Twenty-first-century Chancerys. I didn’t realize, even then, how far he was sunk into it.’

‘Jeremy said Sebbie was resigned to there being a death in the wind, and he thought it was going to be either him or you.’

‘I don’t believe these hicks,’ Bliss said.

‘We use words like “superstition” in a loose, disparaging way,’ Merrily said, ‘but when superstition meets mental instability it can get way out of hand. And that’s why neither you nor Howe is going to get a motive that makes complete sense. That is, of course, unless—’

‘What?’ Bliss said.

‘Sebbie was drunk when he arrived, right?’

Brigid nodded.

‘Did he attack you?’

‘Not in any... I don’t know. It got stupid, all right? It was never really civilized from the start, but it got... When I said to him that there were these people who were trying to follow the whole curse thing back to Vaughan and wanted to deal with it once and for all, he just... exploded. Went totally berserk. This is in the van, right? How dare these fucking outsiders think they can come in and meddle, take over other people’s lives, other people’s pasts... ? And it’s snowing heavily now, I’m standing in the door of the van, trying to stay upright, and I’m going, “You stupid, drunken pig, we ARE the outsiders who came in and meddled and took over... it’s our fault!” ’

Brigid closed her eyes.

‘The Chancerys,’ Merrily said.

‘Yeah.’

‘Do you think he saw what you were proposing as an attempt to destroy his whole... power base, if you like? The Vaughan in him?’

Brigid nodded. ‘All the baggage that history and folklore had inflicted on the Vaughans, including an exorcism, a snuff-box and a big black ghostly dog – he disowned it all, and he loved it all. It was everything. It was who he was. Mr Sebastian Dacre, JP, Master of the Hunt, Sebbie Three Farms. He needed it like Hattie did. If there is a curse, they gave in to it, they clutched it all to their bosoms. Whoop fucking whoop. It’s like hunting – they know some of it’s vile, but it’s part of their... yeah, their power base.’

‘But it took a lot of booze to live with a curse.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What happened on the rocks, Brigid?’ Bliss said quietly.

‘Well, he started by breaking up my humble power base, as he saw it. He threw the oil lamp at the wall, and it went on the bed. He was set on a course by then, he made sure it all caught fire. After that, I don’t even... I don’t even remember how we got there...’

‘At the edge of the rocks?’

‘He was pretty drunk. I was thinking, what if he goes up with the petrol tank? Selfishly, I assure you, because I’d get the blame...’

‘What happened, Brigid?’ Bliss said again.

‘What happened?’ Brigid started to laugh and then choked on the smoke. ‘The last of the Chancerys – the last of the Vaughans – out on the edge like Holmes and Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, that’s what happened. And the snow’s coming down heavily – you couldn’t even see where the edge was. And he’s going, “I’m having you out of here!” He’s going, “I’ll have the whole of the fucking press here by the morning, if not before. You can’t go anywhere, you can’t get out in this weather, but they’ll get in when they know. They’ll hire helicopters.” This kind of madness. Then he just starts backing away towards the edge, and he’s shouting, “What you gonna do now? Gonna push me over like our esteemed granny?” And I’m like, “Are you crazy?” ’Cause the snow’s built up this kind of ledge that projects beyond the edge, so you think it goes back further than it actually does.’

‘And he was crazy,’ Merrily said.

‘Oh yeah. But I mean, me too. I pushed the bastard over.’

‘You pushed him or he slipped?’ Merrily said.

‘I pushed him. I’m Brigid Parsons, granddaughter of Hattie C. What do you think, I’m going to try and save him?’

‘Yes,’ Merrily said.

Bliss said, ‘Merrily...’

‘He grabbed at your hands, your wrists, and you tried to hold on, and his nails tore your wrist...’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘You don’t want to remember.’

‘Merrily, this is not what we do,’ Bliss said.

‘This is not the interview room, I can do what I like.’ The heat was in Merrily’s spine again, all the way up. ‘This is Brigid taking responsibility again. She’s putting her hands up and she’s saying, “Yes, it’s me, I take full responsibility, it’s me, the flawed human being... it’s not the other thing.” ’

‘Merrily,’ Bliss said gently, ‘you’re forgetting the rest.’

‘No, I’m not. Brigid, did you go down that slippery, treacherous path to the bottom of the quarry in the blinding snow and beat Sebbie Dacre’s head in with a rock? Did you do that?’

Brigid rocked back in the chair, eyes tight shut.

‘I don’t remember.’

‘She doesn’t remember,’ Merrily said to Bliss. ‘You need to get Ben Foley in here.’

55 Sky’s Come Down

ON THE TV monitor, watched by Bliss and Ben Foley, Brigid was talking about life in a detention centre for young offenders where her peers regarded her with a kind of awe.

‘I was pretty much heartbroken for months. Couldn’t talk to anybody for fear of breaking down. That was seen as me being aloof and cool and dangerous. Nothing’s ever how it looks, is it?’

Merrily, crouching next to Brigid at the desk, murmured, ‘Mark and Stuart. Did they try to rape you?’

‘Get off my back, Merrily. Why would I give the parents any reason to like evil Brigid any small amount better while thinking less of their sons?’

‘You’re not evil, Brigid.’

‘Natalie,’ Brigid said.

‘Brigid...’ Bliss was sitting on the edge of the desk. ‘Do you say anything about Dacre on this video?’

Brigid shook her head. ‘He didn’t want any of the spooky stuff.’

Merrily saw Ben Foley wince.

‘I meant his death,’ Bliss said. ‘The death that occurred not long before you recorded this.’

‘No. Of course not.’

‘All right, I’ve seen enough for now, thank you, Mr Foley. Hang on to it, though. Can you make a copy?’

‘I did that before the power went.’ Ben was looking nervous, Merrily thought, his skin pale and porous.

‘Tell me how exactly you encountered Mr Largo last night, Brigid,’ Bliss said.

‘Well... I knew he was supposed to be coming back, to shoot the White Company experiment. Antony said he’d wanted to see me again before it all got going. He said he was on his way to Stanner Hall for the White Company.’ Brigid looked apologetically at Ben. ‘Actually, I don’t think that was his intention. I don’t think he’d have come back here at all last night if the snow hadn’t made it impossible for him to get out of the valley.’

‘You’re probably right,’ Ben said. ‘He was just going through the motions. I misunderstood his glee.’

‘He said he saw me in the Daihatsu, taking the track up to Stanner,’ Brigid said. ‘But then he saw this Range Rover coming up a bit later. When he saw that it was heading the same way, he decided to wait at the bottom, near the quarry, so whoever it was wouldn’t see us together. After... what happ—’ Brigid’s face tightened. ‘After I pushed my cousin off the rocks, when I was stumbling down, Antony must’ve seen me from his Shogun, and he came out to meet me, with a torch. He said he thought he’d seen somebody falling. Next thing, we both saw Sebastian lying in the snow, and it was... you know, it was pretty obvious he was dead.’

‘What did Mr Largo say?’

‘He said, “Christ, Brigid, what’ve you done?” And I was... stunned, I suppose. It was a bad dream. To find I’d... done it again. Killed somebody. Happening just like that – so fast, so unstoppable. You’re looking round to see if the world’s the same place you were in a few minutes ago. It’s like the whole sky’s come down on you. Like all the sides of everything are coming in on you. You can’t believe it happened, you want to turn time back. You can hardly breathe.’

She’s talking about the first time. Merrily’s fingers were clasped around the pectoral cross.

‘I really didn’t hate him, I pitied him. And there he was, killed so quick. Here one minute and ranting... and then just a piece of bloody meat. And you think... how can it—? And... and then you turn around and all your future’s gone as well.’

Bliss said softly, ‘And Mr Largo said... what?’

‘He said, “Oh my, Brigid, you’re in the shit here.” ’

‘He didn’t ask you what happened?’

‘He just said that. And then he said best not to go too near. He said I was obviously in shock. We moved the Daihatsu back to near the roadside, and he took me back to the Shogun and drove me off up towards Presteigne or somewhere. We went into this fairly big pub I’d never been in before, where there were quite a few people, and he found us a table by the fire and he bought us brandies. And he was trying to explain how it was going to be if they got me for this... like if they got me. I knew it was as good as all over, and I was hardly listening, just sitting there in front of that fire, thinking about Jeremy back at The Nant and his fire. That lovely fire. Thinking we’d never sit in front of that again, together. Thinking about Clan, what was going to happen to her now. Thinking how, when the Social Services got hold of her, there’d be nobody who could remotely understand what she was carrying around, and Clan, she doesn’t help herself, you know?’

‘He was right, though,’ Bliss said. ‘You were in a mess.’

‘He said, “Look, I want to help. I’m not going to tell you there’s nothing in it for me, that it’s any kind of selfless act, but I’m willing to up the percentage considerably.” And I’m like, “What’s the use of that, you can’t have a murderer taking a cut, there’s some law against it.” And he said no, the money would go to Clancy, in trust, or whatever. However I wanted to do it.’

‘And now the money you didn’t care about, suddenly that was meaningful.’

‘It was meaningful because I haven’t really got any money. I’ve got a farm and a man who belongs to it, so I haven’t got a farm to sell. And to keep Clan out of the System, that would take big money, to pay for somebody...’

Bliss glanced down at Merrily, then back at Brigid.

‘So you agreed.’

‘He said he had a contract already made up and he’d make some quick changes and put his signature to them, and that would legally oblige him to pay a third of the action to Clancy. He took the contract out of his pocket and he put it on the table in the pub. It looked legit, but how would I know? What was I going to do here? What would you do?’ Brigid did a swift sweep of faces, her hair swinging. ‘Any of you?’

‘So you recorded the interview.’

‘He said if we didn’t do it now, it’d be down the pan... which was pretty obvious. So we drove into New Radnor, and we parked off the bypass, which was still pretty clear, and he set up a camera with a light inside the Shogun. He had two cameras going – one he held, the other on a short tripod in the back of the car, shooting like a profile of my face. He had loads of batteries and stuff, and he clipped a personal microphone to my coat and we... we just recorded it in one go.’

Like it was being done at gunpoint, Merrily thought.

‘I just babbled on, I wasn’t really thinking about what I was saying. He asked questions and I just said the first things that came into my head, except when he asked about Mark and Stuart and I just said I hadn’t got anything to say about that. We must’ve gone on for nearly an hour and a half, with a couple of breaks so he could move the car a bit to stop us getting blocked in by the snow.’

‘And you were sworn to secrecy about when it was done?’ Bliss said.

‘He said it had to be kept under wraps or we wouldn’t make a fraction of the money. He said he’d be compromised if it came out he was a witness to the murder.’

‘Interesting,’ Bliss said. ‘What would this be worth, Mr Foley?’

‘A lot. Even now, Brigid Parsons is still big box office. Brigid Parsons back in the headlines with – I’m sorry – another conviction for a similar crime would be huge. Mega.’

‘Even an interview knocked off in a car?’

‘Makes no difference these days. You can get perfect quality anywhere. Gives it more of a sense of authenticity. By the time he’s dressed it up with other interviews, old news footage, comments from a shrink – you’ve got to have a shrink these days, and most of them will say whatever you want. Yeah, he’s looking at big bucks. Enormous bucks.’

Merrily said, ‘So how important would it be for Brigid to have done another murder?’

‘Like I said – mega. Court case of the year. Questions asked in Parliament about the monitoring of murderers who’ve been let back into society.’ Ben looked at Brigid, as if he still couldn’t absorb the idea of her as a serious killer, as anybody other than Natalie, his manager. ‘But most importantly, she’s out of the picture. This is the only interview anybody will ever get.’

Bliss said, ‘I know where you’re coming from, Merrily, but...’

Merrily looked up at Ben, saw his eyes go wide and still with sudden comprehension.

Bliss chewed his lip, then he said, ‘How successful is Mr Largo at present, Mr Foley?’

‘He... seemed to be on top. But then, in this business, nobody ever goes around telling people their careers are on the slide. I don’t really know where he is in the pecking order, I’ve been out of it for too long. Been out of it so long I trusted him. Thought he was a mate.’

‘But even if he was still successful,’ Merrily said, ‘something like this, that would still be the summit of his career...’

‘God, yes,’ Ben said. ‘Most independent producers would k—’ He swiped back his hair with both hands. ‘Figure of speech.’

Merrily wondered if Largo had heard Sebbie on the phone to Zelda Morgan from the bottom of the rocks, where he’d fallen. Probably not. Had he even thought of the risk that Sebbie’s fall could be ruled out as the cause of death and, if he had, might Sebbie still be alive? Or would he have taken a chance, anyway? She was a notorious convicted killer. Who was going to believe her denials?

She waited for Bliss to ask something, but Bliss was staring up at the window, chewing his lower lip again.

‘What would Largo’s state of mind be?’ she asked Ben Foley. ‘He’s waiting in his car, say at the entrance to the quarry. He’s seen Brigid going up there. He’s seen a Range Rover taking the same route. Perhaps he’s in the car with the headlights on, or perhaps he’s out there with the torch. But suddenly he sees a body tumbling down from the rocks through the snow. What’s he feeling? Shock? Incredulity?’

‘What do I say?’ Ben’s attempt at a smile was loose and nerveless. ‘Shock and incredulity aren’t in Antony’s repertoire.’

‘What, then?’

‘Seeing what looks like a murder happen before his eyes? A murder on a plate? A murder committed by a high-profile killer he’s been... lusting after – for reasons most of us wouldn’t like to contemplate – since he was a graduate trainee?’

‘In your own words, then, sir,’ Bliss said.

‘I would say barely controllable, very dark sexual... excitement.’

‘I see.’

‘Of course, the man has used me, lied to me, cut the ground from under my feet and left me humiliated, so I may be a tad prejudiced...’

‘Brigid,’ Bliss said, ‘when you came down from the rocks, what did Mr Dacre say to you?’

‘He didn’t say anything.’ Merrily was aware of Brigid drawing in a thin thread of a breath. ‘He was dead.’

‘All right.’ Frannie Bliss stood up. ‘I can’t let you go anywhere yet, Brigid, you realize that. But I won’t send you to Hereford. I’ll say we’ve had new snow. I’ll say something.’ He turned to Ben. ‘Where is he, Mr Foley?’

‘He’s gone, I think. Can’t have been too many minutes ago.’

‘Back to London?’

‘He said he’d phone me.’

‘When?’

‘Sometime. Actually, it may be sooner than sometime. After I copied his video discs to VHS, I, ah, put blank ones back in his case.’

‘Naughty. What’ve you done with the originals?’

‘They’re here. I may put them under a stone at the bottom of Hergest Pool for a thousand years.’

‘Sorry, sir?’

‘Local joke,’ Ben Foley said.

Bliss thought for a moment. ‘Sod it, let’s get the bugger stopped on the road and brought back. I want his clothes.’

They went out for air, Merrily and Brigid.

They stood at the highest point of the forecourt. The view was immense and blinding under a surprising glaze of gaseous early sun. No snow had come down since dawn.

‘Is it safe?’ Brigid was staring at one of the small farms lying under Hergest Ridge like a trinket fallen from a shelf, and Merrily realized that this must be The Nant, tilted into the hillside, half submerged in snow. ‘Is it safe to tell Clancy? Is it safe to tell Jeremy?’

You could see something crawling slowly towards it like a beetle, perhaps the loyal Danny Thomas going in his tractor to see to Jeremy’s animals.

‘I think Jeremy already knows.’ Merrily gazed over the snowy forestry to Hergest Ridge: thick white icing on an old fruit cake, rich and spicy, dark and bitter and soaked in alcohol. Where was the Hound? Out there, somewhere, or existing only in the collective consciousness of mid-Border people, a shadow on the retina of the mind’s eye?

‘Can I stay here?’ Brigid said. ‘If it...?’

‘Can you?’

‘It’s a challenge, isn’t it?’

‘Everywhere’s a challenge.’

She was thinking about something Gomer had said about Jeremy’s island of calm in a sea of noise and blood. She wondered what would happen now to Sebbie Dacre’s three farms, whether some other robber baron would come riding over the horizon in his Range Rover, unable to spot the symptoms of history until the disease had set in. It was important to guard the island.

Behind them, a shout went up.

‘That,’ Frannie Bliss said, ‘is outrageous. They think they’re a bloody law unto themselves, these bastards.’

‘It’s a remote area,’ Mumford said. ‘Always been self-sufficient. Half of them have got their own snowploughs.’

Merrily stood at the bottom of the steps, below the hotel porch, as Bliss followed Mumford down.

‘Who we looking at here, Andy?’

‘I’ll give you three names, boss. Berrows... Thomas... Parry.’

‘Damage?’

‘The van with Dacre’s body in it had a headlamp smashed. That’s the only police property. However—’

Merrily hurried over. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Your little friends,’ Bliss said, ‘decided, for reasons of their own, to reverse all the sterling work done to clear tons of snow from the bottom of the drive, thus allowing us all to return to comparative civilization.’

‘They... put the snow back?’

‘They put it back, Merrily, even better than nature had done it in the first place.’ Bliss’s voice acquired some heat energy. ‘They seem to have created an impacted wall of snow harder than the sides of the fucking Cresta Run. So that the first vehicles, thinking the road was clear, just piled into it.’

‘I think it was Berrows started it,’ Mumford said. ‘He was... in a bit of an emotional state. Especially after the girl came down. Then Thomas and Parry arrived in the tractor with a plough, and it escalated. They can go a bit mental, sometimes, Border people.’

‘Nick them,’ Bliss said grimly.

‘And the other bloke’s talking about legal action,’ Mumford said.

‘Sorry, Andy?’

‘The Scottish bloke.’

‘Scottish bloke.’

‘In the Shogun.’

‘I see.’

In the silence, a little smile landed like an insect at the corner of Bliss’s mouth.

‘The impact seems to have dislocated his shoulder,’ Mumford said.

‘Did you tell him how sorry we were?’

‘No, I thought you’d like to do that yourself, boss. As the SIO.’

‘Yes,’ Bliss said. ‘That would be correct procedure. I’ll come now.’

56 Christmas Eve

KILLING FOR A chip shop. Killing for what Jane had described as a contemporary dynamic.

Small doorways for big evil.

‘Most motives for murder seem ridiculous,’ Merrily said, in front of the parlour fire as the daylight slipped away. ‘But all that tells you is that the reasons – the motives – are usually irrelevant. For most of us, they wouldn’t be motives. We hope.’

You hoped. You hoped you had an immune system, a natural defence – Christianity, whatever – against all the evil in the air around you. You hoped there was no such thing as an evil person, only someone with a weakened immune system.

She’d been to see Alice this afternoon. Alice had come out of hospital. Alice was at her sister’s house in Belmont – Darrin’s family, Roland’s family. A whole male generation wiped out.

Alice couldn’t move her left side much, but she could communicate, just about – verbal soup dribbling from the right side of her mouth. You could get the sense of it, mostly. For instance, the family’s discovery that no doctor had actually treated Dexter Harris for asthma in over ten years. Since the Family GP had become part of history, such things didn’t come out.

How long had Dexter been feigning attacks to get himself out of various situations and responsibilities? Don’t give me no stress.

Mostly, Alice had just wept, a fiery little woman doused by life. There would be a lot of weeping in that house this Christmas. It was what Christmas would become, for them, for the foreseeable future.

She’d promised Alice and the family some healing. From the Sunday-evening service. The, erm, healing service. Well, what could you do? A forum to discuss setting up a spiritual healing group in the diocese had been arranged for mid-January, at the Cathedral. The Bishop himself would chair the meeting. The idea of having Lew Jeavons as guest speaker had been ruled out.

‘I need to ring him,’ she said to Lol. ‘Do I mention the twelve priests? Or do I wait for him to bring it up?’

‘He may not want to explain.’ Lol was sitting on the rug with his back against the sofa, his head against Merrily’s thigh. ‘Some things just... evolve.’

Just before she and Jane had left Stanner, Alistair Hardy had taken Merrily aside. I’m uncomfortable about this, Mrs Watkins, knowing how you feel about people like me. But after what you said when we met on the stairs, about the twelve priests and Black Vaughan...

He’d counted them, he said. This was just after the incident with the girl during the Eucharist, before Merrily had initiated the baptism. He’d counted all twelve.

And what were they wearing? Merrily had asked, legitimately sceptical. Kind of... monk’s robes? All carrying candles?

Yes, Hardy said, they did have a candle each. But none of them wore monks’ robes. And two of them were black, and one was a woman.

Just thought she might like to know.

Lol had told her that Jeavons had felt bad about the way the Dexter thing was turning out. Asking Lol to ring him as soon as he could find out what time the Stanner Eucharist had been arranged for. He hadn’t said a word to Lol about his international database of over three hundred healing and deliverance priests.

After being given the approximate time, he’d asked for the location. And a map reference.

Hardy said he’d noticed that Merrily’s aura had appeared brighter and more vivid. As the dark essence of Hattie Chancery hazed into something palely grey.

Probably still there, though, Hardy said. There’s probably more to do. You’d know about that.

Aftercare required.

Before lunch, Bliss had rung. DNA tests on Antony Largo’s clothing had proved inconclusive. Maybe he’d managed to dump some. This was not, Bliss said, going to be easy. Antony Largo was not in custody, and he had the worst kind of lawyer. The Crown Prosecution Service, as usual, was demonstrating symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome.

However, Strathclyde Police had been helpful. Largo had formerly been known as Anthony McKinnon. Born in the fairly sedate seaside resort of – wait for it – Largs, north of Glasgow, McKinnon, aged sixteen, had been one of several juveniles questioned in connection with the alleged gang rape of a prostitute, who had eventually decided that she didn’t want to appear in court. It wasn’t much, Bliss said, but it was a start.

Brigid Parsons had made a full statement at Hereford and had been released without charge. It was a delicate situation, and its satisfactory resolution depended on Bliss nailing Largo. Bliss wouldn’t give up.

Meanwhile, Natalie Craven and her daughter had returned to The Nant. Former DCI Ellie Maylord had been consulted and would be travelling down. Bliss thought it would be a good idea if she and Merrily met. Merrily agreed.

Aftercare needed.

But Dexter Harris, Bliss said, had been more or less textbook. A black bin-liner had been found in a roadside litter-bin, inside it a claw hammer coated with blood and hair. By this time, Dexter’s truck had been forensically examined. Truck/ hammer/ Darrin/Dexter. A formality. Lol’s part in the final act had not been made public, but he wasn’t looking forward to the inquest.

Lol’s theory about Roland? Well, that was never going to be proved one way or the other. Lol was convinced that when Dexter had made Darrin take the car that night, it had been his intention that Roland wasn’t coming back. Everything that Dexter had laid on Darrin – the brutality, the cruelty – was probably down to Dexter. All that and more.

Howe, it seemed, had been unconcerned. It was all academic now. Forensic psychology would say that Dexter was formula-psychopathic – the lies, the cunning, the remorseless cruelty. Merrily recalled a report that suggested over one per cent of the population was, to some extent, psychopathic. Most psychos didn’t kill. Most killers didn’t make a habit of it.

‘The thing is,’ Lol said now, ‘Dexter was... let’s be honest, he was dull. An extremely dull person. Unbelievably self-righteous, limited intellect, all that. But as a killer, he was imaginative. He was instinctive... creative. He had flair.’

‘Christ, Lol!’

‘Like, when he decided I needed to be killed he had it all worked out in no time. Disappearance... some landfill site. My DNA all over Alice. He walks in and finds Alice has had a stroke, he acts on it, he uses the whole situation, including the weather conditions, just like he did with Darrin – I mean, both of those could have worked. And he’d have held out against interrogation because he’d have resented it. The cops would have been in the wrong. He wasn’t a criminal. He was a working man with a clean record... well, since the age of twelve, and you couldn’t hold that against him.’

‘But some of his family did.’

‘And he resented it. His family had treated him badly. Whatever happened to any of them, they deserved it.’

‘What’s the betting that the damage inflicted on Dexter’s family’s property by Darrin was not in fact done by Darrin at all?’

‘Dexter.’ Lol nodded. ‘Makes sense. Dexter seems to have created a whole new image for Darrin within the family. Alice swallowed it, anyway. Maybe she didn’t see much of Darrin.’

‘But Roland’s death – accidental? Engineered? How good a driver was Dexter?’ Merrily remembered Bliss’s re -construction.

Unfortunately, Dexter panics, stands on the brakes and the Fiesta stalls on the kerb, directly in the path of the oncoming lorry.

‘Try not to think too hard about it,’ Lol said.

‘Where does it come from, then?’ Merrily said. ‘What was feeding his imagination?’

‘Your guess may be better than mine.’

She slid down to the rug, next to him. Although the snow was almost gone, he hadn’t left Ledwardine since Dexter’s death. She hadn’t yet asked him what the estate agent had told him before the office had closed for Christmas, an hour or so ago.

‘I kept wanting to confess to Annie Howe.’ Lol looked at her, his glasses faintly misted. ‘Maybe it’s something about her that withers your resolve. But then I hadn’t got much resolve anyway.’

‘Much more than you used to have, sunshine.’

‘I mean, I did it. I killed him.’

‘Why do people keep throwing false confessions at me? You didn’t touch him.’

‘Which makes it worse. Like hiring a hit man.’

‘You didn’t hire the beam.’

‘Every time I walked under it, I instinctively ducked,’ Lol said, ‘although I knew I could walk under it upright, with three or four inches to spare.’

He’d followed Gomer’s advice, told Howe that Dexter was coming after him and he just ran upstairs. In fact, Lol had sat on the stairs and insulted Dexter, building up Dexter’s fury to the point where...

‘But if he’d suspected there might have been a low beam there,’ Merrily said, ‘he’d have bent his head, and then he’d have...’

‘Taken me apart.’

‘And you didn’t know the beam was going to kill him.’

‘Well, that’s the point. I didn’t care.’

‘Lol, look at me,’ Merrily said. ‘With Alice lying there, I wouldn’t have cared.’

Prayer and cleansing in the inner hall. Some savage scrubbing of the floor. She’d offered to conduct Dexter’s funeral at Hereford Crematorium, but the Bishop didn’t think it was wise under the circumstances.

‘I wonder where he got his inhalers.’

‘I think he or Darrin would know people who did chemists’ shops. Not that Dexter would personally associate with that kind of low life...’

In the village – this made him feel even more uncomfortable – people smiled at Lol now. ’Ow’re you, Mr Robinson?

Scary.

‘Do you think I should ask Jeavons over for Christmas lunch? I know it’s a bit late, now, and with Eirion coming over...’

‘Lew’s going to his mother-in-law’s.’

She looked at him suspiciously. ‘You’ve become very friendly with Jeavons...’

‘I don’t understand it either. Normally I don’t get on with priests at all.’

‘All right,’ Merrily said, ‘what did the estate agent say?’

She knew the agents had been trying to get hold of him because Prof Levin had called to pass on the message.

‘It’s not necessarily good news,’ Lol said. ‘The people who were buying the house called yesterday to pull out. The husband said he was very annoyed that nobody had told them. He’s a lawyer in London. He said there’d been a precedent and someone had received a considerable out-of-court settlement as a result of a similar failure to disclose a problem of this nature.’

‘Huh?’

‘They have a five-year-old son, and he was playing about upstairs and he came down in tears and said he wanted them to have their own house. Said the same thing the next time they came. They got it out of him that he kept meeting an old woman on the landing. In a cloak.’

Merrily sat up.

‘The wife went into Jim Prosser’s shop and asked him a few meaningful questions. The agent said Jim told them about Lucy, the poncho. He said she was well known as a witch.’

‘Jim said that?’

She thought, ’Ow’re you, Mr Robinson?

‘The agent said normally this sort of thing didn’t put people off any more. Kind of added to the charm of a house. She said, “Of course, I know you were a friend of the late Miss Devenish.” ’

‘Meaning it wouldn’t bother you...’

‘It wouldn’t have bothered these people either except that the kid suffers from...’ Lol hesitated. ‘He’s got asthma.’

‘I don’t like this,’ Merrily said.

‘I knew you wouldn’t. I asked for some time to think about it.’

‘If I told Huw Owen about this, he’d say it was some kind of occult trap.’

‘He’s away, though.’

‘Yes.’

‘You want to consult Jeavons?’

She looked at him in his Gomer Parry sweatshirt, his spare pair of glasses, a bruise around his left eye.

She leaned her head back against the sofa.

‘Nothing’s bloody simple in this job, is it?’

Early evening, she had a phone call from Beth Pollen, calling from the Stanner Hall Hotel where she and Jane were helping out. Jane said the atmosphere there was definitely better, although that might be psychological. Amber, she said, was usually cheerful; Ben was quiet and contemplative.

‘I went to Stanner Rocks this afternoon,’ Beth Pollen said. ‘Martin Booth, who’s in charge of the botanical survey, took a group of us up there – the first since the police removed their tapes and things. The naturalists were jolly worried about damage done to the site by all that activity. Have you heard of the Early Star of Bethlehem?’

‘Is that the unique...?’

‘The plant that’s unique, in this country, to Stanner Rocks. It’s just flowered.’

‘Oh.’

‘Despite the name, this doesn’t normally happen until February. Personally, I’m taking it as a sign of something. Jane thought you’d want to know. She wanted to bring you a sprig, but they wouldn’t let her touch it.’

Merrily smiled. ‘I should think not. Erm, have you spoken to Alistair Hardy?’

‘At length.’

‘Right. Well, about the twelve priests...’

‘I’m sorry?’ Mrs Pollen said.

‘Oh. Well.’ Merrily watched Lol playing with Ethel the cat. His sweatshirt had ridden up. An area above his waist was still purple and black. ‘Well, I hope you have a good Christmas,’ she said.