The Remains of an Altar

1 On the Bald Hill

More than a day later, there was still wreckage around: a twisted door panel across the ditch and slivers of tyre like shed snakeskin in the grass.

It had rained last night, and the Rev. S. D. Spicer’s cassock was hemmed with wet mud. What might have been a piece of someone’s blood-stiffened sleeve was snagged in brambles coiling like rolls of barbed wire from the hedge. The countryside, violated, wasn’t letting go. It felt to Merrily as if the air was still vibrating.

‘Other vehicle was an ancient Land Rover Defender,’ Spicer said. ‘Must’ve been like driving into a cliff face.’

Ground mist was draped like muslin over the hedges and down the bank and the early sun lit the windows of a turreted house in the valley. Looking back along the road Merrily could see no obvious blind spots, no overhanging trees.

‘Boy died in the ambulance.’ Spicer nodded at the metallic red door panel, crumpled and creased like thrown-away chocolate paper. ‘Took the fire brigade best part of an hour getting him out the car. Fortunately, he was unconscious the whole time.’

Merrily shook her head slowly, the way you did when there was nothing to be said. No act of violence as sudden and savage, massive and unstoppable, as a head-on car crash. She was thinking, inevitably, of Jane and Eirion out at night in Eirion’s small car. One momentary lapse of attention, a snatched caress, and…

‘He was in his mid-twenties. Lincoln Cookman, from north Worcester. The girl … no hurry to get her out. She’d had her window wide open. No seat belt. Head almost taken off on impact. Sonia Maloney, from Droitwich.’

‘Oh God.’ Merrily took a step back. ‘How old?’

‘’Bout nineteen.’ Spicer’s London accent was as flat as a rubber mat. ‘All horribly brutal and unsightly, but mercifully quick. No suffering. Except, of course, for Preston Devereaux.’

‘Sorry, Preston—?’

‘Local farmer and chairman of the parish council. And, as it happened, the driver of the Land Rover. Returning late from a family wedding.’

‘Oh, hell, really?’

‘Could’ve been any of us, Mrs Watkins. Parish Council’s been asking for speed cameras since last autumn. Not that that would’ve made a difference, state these kids must’ve been in. They come over from Worcester, places like that, at the weekends. Windows open, music blasting. Sixty-five, seventy, wrong side of the road. Poor guy’s still reliving it. He’ll need a bit of support – my job, I think.’

‘And what, erm … what’s mine, exactly, Mr Spicer?’

It was a reasonable question, but he didn’t answer. Parish priests would often have difficulty explaining why they’d resorted to Deliverance. Spicer had been terse and cagey on the phone yesterday. Can you come early? Before eight a.m.? In civvies. Best not make a carnival out of it.

OK, just gone 7.50 on a Monday morning, and here she was in discreet civvies: jeans and a sweatshirt. And here’s the Rector, all kitted out: cassock, collar, pectoral cross. Merrily felt wrong-footed. Why would he want that? She’d never met him before, didn’t even know his first name. Never been to this village before, out on the eastern rim of the diocese where it rose into the ramparts of Worcestershire.

‘Well, the point is,’ Spicer said, ‘this is the worst but it’s not exactly the first.’

‘You mean it’s an accident black spot?’

Sometimes, when a stretch of road acquired a reputation for accidents, someone would suggest that a bad pattern had been established, and you’d be asked to bless it. One of those increasingly commonplace roadside rituals, support for all the road-kill wreaths laid out by bereaved relatives – how did all that start? Anyway, it was a job for the local guy, unless there were complications.

‘How many actual accidents have there been, Mr Spicer?’

He didn’t respond. He was standing quite still; shortish and thickset, with sparse greying hair shaved tight to his head and small, blank eyes that seemed to be on his face rather than embedded there. Like a teddy bear’s eyes, Merrily thought. Poor man, Sophie had said last night on the phone. She took the children, of course.

It was as though some part of Spicer had withdrawn, the way a computer relaxed into its screensaver. Not many people could do this in the presence of a stranger – especially clergy who, unless they were in a church, tended to treat silence like a vacuum into which doubt and unbelief might enter if it wasn’t filled with chatter, however inane.

OK, whatever. Merrily let the silence hang and looked up at the tiered ramparts of the sculpted fortress-hill called Herefordshire Beacon, also known as British Camp. This was the most prominent landmark in the Malverns. Where the Celts were said to have held out against the Romans. The misty sun was hovering over it like a white-cowled lamp.

The name Malvern came from the Welsh moel bryn, meaning bald hill, and bald it still was, up on the tops of this startling volcanic ridge, while the foothills and the Alpine-looking valleys were lush with orchards and the gardens of summer villas: well-preserved remains of Elgar’s England.

‘Three … four now,’ Spicer said. ‘Maybe even five, including this one. That’s inside a couple of months. One was a lorry, took a chunk out of the church wall.’

‘And on a stretch of road as open as this, I suppose that’s…’

‘Drivers reckoned they swerved to avoid a ghost,’ Spicer said.

His tone hadn’t altered and his eyes remained limpid. A wood pigeon’s hollow call was funnelled out of the valley.

‘That took a while to come out, didn’t it?’ Merrily said.

‘Come back to the house.’ He turned away. ‘We’ll talk about it there.’

2 Uncle Alfie

After very little sleep, Jane awoke all sweating and confused. On one level she was lit up with excitement, on another fired by the wrongness of things: injustice, greed, sacrilege.

Bastards.

The thinness of the light showed that it was still early, but the Mondrian walls were already aglow: ancient timber-framed squares, once wattle and daub, then plastered and whitewashed and finally overpainted, by Jane herself, in defiant reds and blues and oranges.

It was more than two years since she’d coloured the squares – just a kid, then, disoriented by the move to this antiquated village with a mother who used to be normal and had suddenly turned into a bloody priest.

Just a kid, determined to make her mark: Jane’s here now. Jane takes no shit. This is Jane’s apartment. This is the way Jane does things, OK?

In a seventeenth-century vicarage, it wouldn’t have been at all OK with the Listed-Buildings Police, but it had seemed unlikely that they’d ever come beating on the door with a warrant to investigate the attic. Looking back, Mum had been seriously good about it, letting Jane establish a personal suite up here and splatter the walls with coloured paint they couldn’t really afford … and never once suggesting that it might look just a bit crap.

But that was over two years ago and now Jane was, Christ, seventeen. And this once-important gesture, these once-deeply-symbolic walls, were looking entirely, irredeemably naff. Not even much like a Mondrian – in the middle of an A-level art course, she could say that with some certainty.

More like a sodding nursery school.

Decision: the Mondrian walls would have to go. You were in no position to fight senseless public vandalism if you couldn’t identify your own small crimes.

That sorted, Jane sat up in bed and looked out of the window at the real issue. Full of the breathless excitement of new discovery and a low-burning rage which, she’d have to admit, was also a serious turn-on.

Below her, beyond the front hedge, lay Ledwardine, this black and white, oak-framed village, embellished with old gold by the early sun. Defended against neon and advertising hoardings by the same guys who would’ve freaked if they’d ever been exposed to the Mondrian walls … while totally missing the Big Picture.

The focus of which was just beyond the village: a green, wooded pyramid rising out of a flimsy loincloth of mist.

Cole Hill. She’d always assumed that it had simply been named after somebody called Cole who’d tried to farm it a few centuries ago. Now … Cole Hill … it sang with glamour.

Jane sank back into the pillows, last night’s images coalescing around her: the slipping sun and the line across the meadow. Drifting down from the hill, with the blackening steeple of Ledwardine Church marking the way like the gnomon on the sundial of the village. Amazing, inspirational.

But, like, for how long?

Tumbling out of bed, she dislodged from the table the paperback Old Straight Track she’d been reading until about two a.m. – photo on the back of benign-looking bearded old guy, glasses on his nose. Alfred Watkins of Hereford: county councillor, magistrate, businessman, antiquarian, photographer, inventor, all-round solid citizen. And visionary.

Jane Watkins picked up the book.

You and me, Uncle.

This book … well, it had been around the vicarage as long as Jane had, and she’d thought she must have read it ages ago. Only realizing a week or so back that all she’d done was leaf through it, looking at Watkins’s pioneering photos, assuming his ideas were long outdated, his findings revised by more enlightened thinking. Now, because of this A-level project, she’d finally read it cover to cover. Twice. Feeling the heat of a blazing inspiration. And it was all so close. Mum was probably right when she said there was no family link, and yet it was as if this long-dead guy with the same name was communicating with Jane along one of his own mysterious straight lines.

Saying, help me.

Jane turned her back on the clashing imperatives of the Mondrian walls, stumbled to the bathroom, and ran the shower.

She needed back-up on this one.

Two years ago, telling Mum would have been a total no-no, the issue too left-field and the gulf between them too wide. Two years ago, the sight of Mum kneeling to pray would have Jane shrivelling up inside with embarrassment and resentment. But now she was older and Mum was also more balanced, a lot less rigid.

Except for the rumble of the old Aga and the rhythmic sandpaper sound of Ethel washing her paws on the rug in front of it, the kitchen was silent.

Jane found a note on the table. It said:

J. YOU’VE PROBABLY FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT THIS … BUT HAD TO LEAVE EARLY THIS MORNING TO MEET PARANOID RECTOR IN THE MALVERNS. THICK-SLICED LOAF IN BREAD BIN, EGGS IN BASKET. DON’T FORGET TO LEAVE DRIED FOOD OUT FOR ETHEL. SORRY ABOUT THIS, FLOWER. SEE YOU AFTER SCHOOL. LOVE, M.

Flower. Like she was seven.

But, yeah, she had forgotten. In fact, there’d been so much on her mind when she’d come in last night from Cole Hill that she’d hardly listened to anything Mum had said, before pleading fatigue and bounding up to the apartment to research, research, research well into the early hours, until she’d finally fallen asleep.

Jane left the note on the table, went to find the dried cat-food for Ethel and grab a handful of biscuits from the tin. No time for eggs and toast.

What about school?

What about not going?

She didn’t remember ever bunking off before. But some things were too important for delays, and anyway school was winding down now towards the long summer break.

Trying to open the biscuit tin, she found she was still gripping The Old Straight Track, having brought it down with her like a talisman. On the front was a misty photograph of a perfect Bronze Age burial mound swelling behind a fan of winter trees.

Yesterday evening, at sunset, she’d seen – and she must have been around there a dozen times in the past without spotting it – what must surely be the remains of a burial mound, or tumulus, or tump, on the edge of the orchard behind Church Street. The magical things you could so easily miss, bypass, ignore … or destroy.

Jane felt this swelling sense of responsibility towards a man who had already been dead for well over half a century when she was born.

You and me, Uncle Alfie.

3 For the Views

Must have been in one of Jane’s pagan books that Merrily had read how, in primitive communities, the local shaman was often a social outcast, both feared and derided. Being a female exorcist in the Church of England gave you some idea of what this must have been like.

‘Deliverance Consultant.’ The Reverend Spicer was shaking his head wearily. ‘What exactly does that … you know … ?’

She’d watched him moving around, pulling down tea caddy, mugs, milk and sugar from strong, beechwood units. He knew where everything was. After what Sophie had told her in the office, she’d been half-expecting some kind of desperate chaos in the rectory kitchen – unwashed dishes, layers of congealed fat on the stove – but it was clean and functional, if not exactly cosy.

He spilled a single blob of milk, frowned and ran a dishcloth over it.

‘I know what “exorcist” used to mean. Deliverance is a bit more … And consultant?’

‘That just means I don’t get involved personally unless I’m invited to. On the basis that these … slightly iffy things are usually best handled by the guy on the ground. Which would be you, Mr Spicer.’

‘Call me Syd.’ He opened a cutlery drawer, extracted two spoons. ‘You ever done an exorcism?’

‘Minor exorcism, mainly – Requiem Eucharist for the unquiet dead, variations on that. Never had to stop a small child abusing herself with a crucifix, never been sprayed with green bile. Although, naturally, I live in hope.’

You got this all the time. A recent survey had shown that more people in Britain believed in ghosts than in God. Whereas parish priests still tended to believe in some kind of God but often had a problem with ghosts. Even more of a problem with exorcism, last refuge of anachronistic misfits in the desperately modern C of E.

Spicer didn’t smile. Behind him, on the Rayburn, the kettle hissed.

‘So what qualifies for a minor exorcism?’

‘Usually, an unhappy atmosphere that doesn’t respond to concentrated prayer. Would you like me to lend you a book? That’d take care of the consultant bit.’

‘I think I need the personal service.’ He sat down opposite her. ‘I’m just … not sure, frankly, about where you…’

Merrily sighed. That other familiar barbed hurdle.

‘My spiritual director is a bloke called Huw Owen. Runs deliverance training courses in the Brecon Beacons?’

‘Yeah, I know the area.’

His small, passive eyes said, too well. Curious.

‘At the end of the course he gave me the regulation warning. Told me ordained women were becoming the prime target for every psychotic grinder of the satanic mills who ever sacrificed a chicken. Therefore a woman exorcist might as well paint a big bull’s-eye between her … on her chest.’

‘Maybe you saw it as a bit of a challenge.’ Spicer, decently, didn’t look at Merrily’s chest. ‘A chance to carry women’s ministry into a dark and forbidden area.’

‘Well, no, the point I’m making … I’m not a militant feminist, I’m not a post-feminist, I’m not pioneer material and I’m not—’

‘Honestly.’ He held up his hands. ‘I don’t have a problem with women priests. Nor even women deliverance consultants. In principle.’

‘So the problem is?’

The kettle came whistling to the boil.

‘Problem is,’ he said, ‘taking it seriously, as you’re bound to do – being comparatively new to the job and with the side issue of the women’s ministry still having something to prove – it occurs to me you might not be up for what could be a PR exercise.’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘I mean if I, as Rector of Wychehill, were to ask you, as official diocesan exorcist, to perform a public ceremony of, shall we say, spiritual cleansing, whatever you wanna call it, simply to make the community feel happier – take some pressure off?’

‘Off whom?’ Merrily reached down to her shoulder bag: cigarettes.

‘Off me, for a start.’ Spicer poured boiling water into a deep brown teapot. ‘See, these people who say they had an accident because they swerved to avoid a spectral figure on the Queen’s Highway … I’m having difficulty with it. They’re decent people, but…’

‘That’s OK.’ Merrily brought out the Silk Cut and the dented Zippo. ‘Really.’

To a stranger, the road was the least ghostly aspect of Upper Wychehill. It glided down the valley in a long, slow slope, with the wooded hills hunched behind it like a giant’s shoulders. As many of its dwellings were invisible, it had been hard to make out where the village began and where it ended.

The reason why many of the homes were invisible was that they were on different levels, with rows of houses above and below the road. The ones above were set back into the hill and the ones falling away below it, all you could see of them as you drove past were hedges, walls and gates. They seemed to be mainly bungalows with colonial verandas or flagged patios with sundials and statuary, barbecues and big views across Herefordshire.

The few grey buildings at road level were weighted by the church, this immense neo-Gothic barn, probably late-Victorian, screened by two substantial oak trees either side of the entrance. Further down, built of the same stone, with a dramatic view of the Beacon, was the rectory. A big family house with a home-made swing in the front garden. From what Merrily understood from Sophie, the Spicer kids had been long past the swing stage. But it still looked starkly symbolic of loss, with its peeling frame and one side of the wooden seat fallen off its chain.

When they were inside, she’d asked Spicer, without thinking, if he had help in the house.

‘What? A cleaner? A housekeeper?’ He’d laughed. ‘Do you?’

Point taken. No private income.

‘I get occasional offers,’ he’d said. ‘We’ve got several nice ladies in Upper Wychehill. The Ladies of Wychehill? That sound like a book? Listen. First rule for the solo priest. Don’t give anybody room for gossip. My wife left just over three months ago. Since then, I’ve done all my own cleaning, cooking, gardening, painting, the lot, plus keeping three parishes on the go. Which makes for a long day.’

He’d looked at her, his soft-toy’s eyes unmoving.

‘But a mercifully short night.’

Outside the bay window, the still-shadowed long back lawn was tidily mown and trimmed but had no flowers. It ended where a bank of fir trees lifted the land into the hills.

‘I can give you a list of people to talk to, so you can make up your own mind.’ Syd Spicer crossed to the Rayburn. ‘You want some toast? Or I can do full English. I’m fairly capable.’

‘I can see that. Tea’ll be fine, thanks.’

He brought two white mugs to the table, and then sugar and milk.

‘Point is, Mrs Watkins, country areas—’

‘Merrily, do you think?’

‘Yeah, OK. Country areas, Merrily, are superstitious, just like they’ve always been – you know this. Where are you based, North Herefordshire?’

‘Ledwardine. ’Bout an hour from here.’

He nodded. ‘Only nowadays the superstition comes from a different direction. The locals might be less credulous than their grandparents were, but your city-bred incomers always include the kind of people who’re living in the sticks because they want to get back to a primitive belief system. They’re the ones who organize the wassailing and stuff at Christmas, dangle charms off their porches.’

‘Everything except go to church,’ Merrily said. ‘But if you have an accident black spot, they’ll be the first to suggest the area might be haunted?’

Spicer shook his head sadly.

‘I’ve got three parishes and the others are a healthy mix of locals and new blood. In Upper Wychehill, a real local person is somebody who’s been here twenty-five years. It didn’t really exist until the 1920s, when the church was built – gesture of apology by the owner of one of the quarry firms mutilating the Malverns.’

‘He must have been very sorry.’

‘Yeah, big, innit? Especially in the middle of a few farms and not much else, as it was then. The bloke saw it as a concert hall as well, however – strictly religious, of course. Same time, he had this house built for the minister, and a sum of money donated to the Church, to pay him – long exhausted, of course but, by then, more housing had gone up and it was a legit parish.’

‘So, what you’re saying, it’s not—’

‘Not a real village, no. Just a mess of mixed-up dwellings either side of a road with no pavement. So people never walk about and they rarely meet each other. Some are weekend cottages. Bloke died in one last year, wasn’t found for three weeks. That’s the way it is. No village shop, no cosy pub. Just a church that was always too big and people who move here for the views.’

Spicer had taken a folded piece of notepaper out of his cassock. He opened it out and placed it on the table in front of Merrily.

Dear Rector,

I am sorry to bother you, and I never thought I would write a letter like this, but I am worried sick about my daughter who as you know is a district nurse and has to go out at all hours in her car. I am terrified that something will happen to her on that road. These stories are hard to credit, but something is wrong here. I do not get to church as often as I would like since I have become disabled but I beg of you to take whatever measures are necessary to deal with this problem. I do not care who or what it is, it must be got rid of by whatever means are open to you.

I feel foolish writing a letter like this but Helen is all I have left in this world.

Yours sincerely,

D. H. Walford

‘Poor old Donald. His wife died three years ago. Daughter got divorced and moved in with him. He’s an entirely rational man, retired primary school head. But this … this is how it escalates.’

‘What was the first reported accident?’

‘Lorry. Came across the road, into the church wall, like I said. Still waiting for the insurance to get sorted.’

‘Did you talk to the driver?’

‘I was out at the time, but the guy told Mrs Aird, who does the flowers in the church. She was in there when it happened. He said he’d seen this white orb coming towards him down the middle of the road.’

‘So this was at night?’

‘Early morning. Police suggested the bloke had been driving too long. We tidied up the wall, thought no more about it.’

‘Until…’

‘Week or so later, Tim Loste, the choirmaster, hit a telegraph pole. Not injured, fortunately. And then there was a woman, lives up the hill, flattened her sports car on a tourist’s Winnebago.’

‘And they both saw this light?’

‘They both … saw a figure behind the light.’

He turned to the window. The summer sun had finally penetrated his flowerless garden, but it still looked as if it was clinging to winter. Syd Spicer too, Merrily thought, as he turned to face her.

‘And there might be another one, which is … a bit weird. Joyce Aird can tell you. They won’t talk to me about it. Joyce was waiting for me after the worship yesterday. We’d had some prayers for the victims of the night before, and Joyce said … She gave me a piece of paper with your phone number on it, which she’d obtained from the Diocese. Said it was time to seek help to remove the evil from our midst.’

‘So, essentially, you had me forced on you,’ Merrily said.

‘Me, I’ve been telling them, let’s get the council in … surveyors … examine the road camber. Let’s not get carried away. Famous last words.’

‘What about the Land Rover driver, the chairman of the parish council. Did he see—?’

‘I haven’t even asked him, Merrily.’

She sighed. ‘Would you mind if I had a cigarette?’

Spicer put his head on one side.

‘You disapprove?’

He shrugged. ‘I have one occasionally. When I want to. You go ahead, if you need one.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ Merrily dropped the Silk Cut back into her shoulder bag. ‘You said there was something a bit weird.’

‘Oh, well, that … Joyce wouldn’t talk about it. Not to me. Said it was best discussed with a woman. I suppose I’m getting a bit…’

‘I can imagine.’ She lowered her bag to the floor. ‘How do you want me to go about this?’

‘Well, that’s up to you, Merrily. But the way some of them are reacting, I’m not sure that a simple blessing of the road would be quite enough. I suppose I’d like you to talk to them.’

‘Well, obviously I’d have to—’

‘No, I mean all of them.’

‘All of them?’

‘Everybody,’ Syd Spicer said.

4 A Very Public Ghost

‘All of them?’ Sophie said in the Cathedral gatehouse office. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing? At a public meeting?’

Merrily sighed.

‘It’s a very public ghost.’

‘Merrily…’ Sophie looked pained. ‘Has there ever been such a thing as a public ghost?’

Merrily thought about this, elbows on the desk, chin cupped in her palms. She’d been thinking about it for many of the fifty gridlocked minutes she’d spent watching guys in cranes playing pass-the-girder on the site of another new superstore that Hereford didn’t need.

‘No,’ she said. ‘In the real sense, I suppose not.’

‘There you are, then,’ Sophie said. ‘Let the Rector have his public meeting and then you go along afterwards – quietly – and do what you think is necessary.’

Sophie Hill, crisp white blouse and pearls. Very posh, discreet as a ballot box. The Bishop’s lay secretary who, essentially, didn’t work for people or organizations. Who worked for The Cathedral.

Except on Mondays, when Sophie worked more or less full-time for Deliverance. For most parish priests, Monday was a well-defended day off; for Merrily, only a day off from the parish. Monday was when she and Sophie met in the gatehouse office at the Cathedral to deal with the mail and the Deliverance database, and to monitor outstanding cases.

‘I need to remind you that the Crown Prosecution Service have warned that you may still be called to give evidence in the Underhowle case when it finally comes to trial. And on that issue – aftercare. The new minister there would welcome some discreet advice on, as he puts it, disinfecting the former Baptist chapel.’

‘In which case, I might need to go over. Could we stall him until next week? If he could just keep it locked, meantime … keep people out.’

‘Next week also, you’ve agreed to talk to that rather persistent Women’s Institute in the Golden Valley … unfair to postpone again. Don’t look like that – you agreed.’

‘OK.’

Problem here was that WIs always wanted lurid anecdotes, and this was a small county population-wise: one of the audience would always be able to fit names into whichever sensitive issue you were discussing. The policy was to avoid WIs, but occasionally one squeezed through the net. And, sure, there was a pile of parish stuff accumulating on the diary, including a christening tomorrow, and two weddings looming. Big months for weddings, June and July. So…

‘What you’re telling me, Sophie, is that I really don’t need Wychehill.’

Sophie said nothing.

‘What if I walk away now, and it happens again?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Merrily, what if it happens again after you’ve been involved?’

Which it sometimes did, hence the need for aftercare.

‘There are still two people dead, and while linking that to something paranormal is deep water, I’d feel safer going along. Even if it means opening the whole thing up at a public meeting. I mean, I can understand Spicer’s problem. He’s got a worried community which he says isn’treally a community at all. Houses are widely separated, people don’t know one another. He wants to make sure that everybody at least has a chance to find out what the score is.’

‘Merrily, deliverance is about discretion – how many times have you said that? You don’t like addressing WIs about past cases, but you’re perfectly happy to—’

‘I’m not happy—’

‘—To discuss an ongoing problem with a roomful of people, probably including the media.’

‘I don’t think the press would cover anything that local, do you? Hope not.’

‘You don’t think,’ Sophie said. ‘That’s hardly satisfactory, is it? I’d be inclined to get the Rector to absolutely guarantee it. What’s the format going to be?’

‘I listen to the evidence and then outline the options.’

‘Oh, I see. You present them with a series of options, and then they vote on it?’

‘No, I listen to what they have to say and then I make a recommendation based on my … experience.’

Sophie gave Merrily a resigned look and opened the desk diary.

‘When is it? And where?’

‘Wednesday evening at the church. They haven’t got a village hall in Wychehill, I think it was converted. This gets tagged on to the end of the bi-monthly parish meeting, which is open to the public—Look, I’m not going to go in cold, Sophie. I’m going to check it all out thoroughly.’

‘In which case you really don’t have much time.’

‘Which is why, unless you can think of anything more pressing, I think I’d better go back there now.’

Merrily walked over to the window. There was something else…

‘Oh yeah … Sophie, have there been any inquiries to the Diocese from Wychehill – anybody asking for my number?’

‘No. I’d have been told. I’m very strict about that. And they don’t give out your number, they give this number in the first instance. Why?’

‘Nothing, really.’

Merrily looked out of the window over the Cathedral green and sunny Broad Street with its library and museum, its extensive hotel, its classical-pillared Roman Catholic church, its shops and cafés … and at least two well-attested ghost stories that she could think of.

From behind Merrily heard the faint clinking of the chain on Sophie’s glasses as she shook her head in sorrow – with just a hint, Merrily thought, of foreboding.

5 Between the Lines

On top of the hill there was a clearing and the remains of what might have been a cairn of stones.

Lol had never been all the way up before, but Jane had said there was something of serious, serious importance here, and not just to her or even to the whole community of Ledwardine. This was possibly a national treasure.

She’d dragged him out to the edge of the village and then across the main road and over the fields to the first stile, which had a public footpath sign next to it. But if there ever had been a footpath it was long overgrown, and it had been a steep and slippery climb to the top of Cole Hill.

‘You can’t see much now,’ Jane said, among the gorse clumps on the summit, ‘but there was a Celtic settlement here once. So obviously that makes it Ledwardine’s holy hill, right?’

‘If you say so.’

Lol had felt slightly uncomfortable about walking through the woods with his girlfriend’s daughter, her navel exposed below the sawn-off summer top.

No, actually, it wasn’t so much this as her attitude: intense, no frivolity, Jane carrying a sense of purpose like storm clouds around her, intimations of war.

Now she was telling him about the name. How, in The Old Straight Track, Alfred Watkins had identified three other Cole hills, or similar, in Herefordshire. One definition of the word, apparently, was juggler … or wizard.

‘“Cole-prophet” – that’s another ancient term,’ Jane said. ‘So Cole Hill – serious, serious magical associations, Lol. I hadn’t realized that. And if I hadn’t realized it…’

Jane stood in the sunlight. Her hair was pulled back and her eyes seemed to be full of tiny sparks.

‘We live in an enchanted landscape, Laurence. And most of us just don’t see any of it any more. How dispiriting is that?’

Below them, the village was wrapped in greenery, and the mist made smoke rings around the church steeple. The view was dizzyingly seductive: you felt that if you fell into it, it would just absorb you and by the time you reached the ground you’d have evaporated.

Lol shook his head. His day had already been tilted. Monday mornings, he needed to establish a work pattern for the week: sit at the desk by the window, write songs. His livelihood. What he did. What he was supposed to do. So why had he been almost grateful to see Jane crossing the street from the vicarage, wearing her skimpy orange top and her sense of purpose?

Jane said she had the day off school to work on a project connected with A-level art, a portfolio she was compiling on landscape mysteries. Something in connection with this that she needed to discuss, and Merrily had gone off early to meet some angsty priest, so, like, if Lol could spare just one hour…

All around Cole Hill the paths were overgrown; there were broken stiles and barbed-wire fences. It had taken most of an hour just to get here.

Jane shouldered her canvas bag.

‘Nobody comes up here now, and that’s wrong. We all need to go to the high places. It says that in the Bible, so even Mum—’

‘Had you been to this … particular high place before, Jane?’

She frowned. ‘I’m here now, that’s what matters. It’s where the ancient energy is drawn down, to feed the village spiritually, to feed its soul. You know?’

‘Alfred Watkins actually said that, did he? About feeding energy into Ledwardine?’

‘Not exactly, but he would have said it if he hadn’t been a magistrate and stuff, with civic duties and all that crap. You have to read between the lines, Lol.’

‘Right.’

Lol would have to agree that reading Alfred Watkins entirely altered your awareness of the humps and bumps of the countryside – the way Watkins’s own had been altered when he’d stood on top of a hill not far from here and noticed, in a flaring of wild revelation, how ancient sites, from prehistoric stones and mounds to medieval churches, seemed to have been arranged in straight lines. But Watkins had seen them as the earliest British trackways; most of the rest was New Age conjecture.

‘So what do we do now, Jane?’

‘Watch the church. Keep watching the steeple.’

The steeple must have been half a mile away, at least, but from up here you felt you could prick your hand on the tip of the weathercock. Beyond it, to the west, you could see distant Hay Bluff over the mist, a dent in the sky at the end of the Black Mountains.

Jane put on her sunglasses.

‘And then we walk towards it.’

Lol followed her, keeping a few feet behind, sure now that something else was bothering her. Some problem between her and Eirion? They’d been together a long time. Maybe too long, for teenagers.

‘We came up the easy way,’ Jane said over her shoulder. ‘But we have to follow a different route down, to more or less keep to the line. The path zigzags a bit, but if we keep the steeple in view…’

‘Eirion OK, Jane?’

‘Fine.’ Her voice was a little too light. ‘Off to uni in September.’

‘Where?’

‘Depends on his A-level results. Oxford, if he does well. Bristol or Cardiff if he fluffs. Or, if he really fluffs, one of these joints that used to be an FE college until, like, last week?’

‘I see.’

‘I mean, it’s ridiculous how like everybody has to go somewhere. You need a degree to be a hospital porter now. You probably need a degree in, like, hygiene studies to clean lavatories. It’s—’

Jane slid on a small scree of pebbles and grabbed a sapling to keep from falling.

‘—All complete and total bullshit. Just a Stalinist government scam to destroy the individual, get everybody into a slot. Result is you’ve got people walking round with a string of letters after their name, and they’re like, you know, Homer Simpson?’

‘So, you, er…’ Lol thought he was beginning to get the picture. ‘If Eirion does well, you won’t see as much of each other, will you?’

A grey squirrel scurried up a fir tree ahead of them.

‘I just don’t see why,’ Jane said. ‘I mean why? Why do you have to waste precious years being lectured to by all these hopeless losers so you can wind up with some totally meaningless qualification that everybody else has got. Why can’t you just do stuff? Original stuff. I mean … you did.’

‘You got something original in mind?’

They climbed over a rotting stile on the edge of a decaying copse at the foot of Cole Hill. Jane waited for Lol. She was squeezing her hands together.

‘I want to find out things for myself – like, not formalized curriculum shit that just qualifies you to be like every other—’

She spun away. She might have been in tears. She moved rapidly through the trees and out to where another stile had been strung with barbed wire. When Lol reached her she was bent over the wire, breathing hard. The canvas bag was at her feet.

She had both hands around a pair of wire-cutters.

‘Jane?’

‘It’s supposed to be a public footpath. Nobody has any right to—’

Two ends of barbed wire sprang apart and Jane stepped back.

‘Jane, where did you get the wire-cutters?’

‘Gomer.’ Jane clambered over the stile. ‘You coming?’

All his foreboding becoming justified, Lol climbed over the stile and stumbled after Jane through tall grass, holding his hands up above the nettles. They came to a five-barred gate set into an overgrown hedge, strands of orange binder twine hanging loose from it.

‘I pulled that off last night.’ Jane opened the gate. ‘Now. Look at that.’

‘What?’

‘Just look!’

Lol closed the gate behind him and stood and looked. He saw a gently sloping meadow full of Hereford cows, red-brown and cream, classic. You didn’t see enough Herefords in Herefordshire these days, but that clearly wasn’t what Jane had meant.

‘Oh,’ Lol said. ‘I see.’

Like the shadow of a tall pole, a path cut directly across the meadow. A visible path that could have been contructed or simply made by sheep crossing the field from gate to gate – dead straight from the gate they’d just come through to another one at a slight angle in the hedge at the bottom of the field. Both gates and the path were directly aligned with the smokey, sepia steeple of Ledwardine Church.

Lol walked towards the centre of the field, keeping to the path, and turned to see that the path was perfectly aligned, in the opposite direction, with the top of Cole Hill.

Some of Watkins’s lines demanded imagination, but this one spoke for itself.

Jane stood on the line, as if she was standing before an altar. Although the sun was high and warm, Lol saw her shiver. She wrapped her bare arms around herself.

‘Before you reach the village, there’s a mound just inside the orchard – behind Church Street? It’s not marked on the map, but it must be an ancient burial site, if only by its position in the landscape. Absolutely on the line. Like, it’s not very high now, but a lot of them aren’t any more; they’ve been ploughed in over the centuries. And then, on the other side of the mound, you’re dead on course, across the market place, for the church.’

‘You’ve convinced me,’ Lol said. ‘It’s a nice one.’

‘And … and, Lol, if you continue the line, through the church – I’ve only done this on the map, but it works, it totally works – within a mile, on the other side, you’ve got an ancient crossroads and a genuine prehistoric standing stone which is not very big but is actually marked on the map.’

‘Well, congratulations,’ Lol said. ‘You’ve found a new ley line.’

‘Ley,’ Jane snapped. ‘Alfred Watkins called them leys. Ley lines – that’s just a term that’s been adopted in almost a disparaging way by so-called experts who say they don’t exist. And, OK, some of them you can draw the line by circling the sites on the map, but when you go there you can’t really see it. But this…’

‘Textbook,’ Lol said. ‘I suppose.’

‘I mean, I can’t claim any credit – except maybe for rediscovering it. This side of the hill’s been more or less hidden away for years, probably since the orchards went into decline. And, oh yeah, you know what this field’s called? Coleman’s Meadow. Geddit? The field where the track was laid out by the Cole-man, the shaman, the wizard … ? And you can feel it, can’t you?’ Jane stamped a foot. ‘Come on, Lol. You’re an artist, a poet. Do not tell me you cannot feel it.’

‘Well…’

‘You stand on the track and you’re, like, totally connected with the landscape. And with the ancestors who lived here and marked out the sacred paths. Thousands of years ago when people were more in contact with the elements? So like whether or not you believe the leys channelled some form of mystical life-force through the land, or they were spirit paths where you could walk with the dead, or whatever … I don’t care. I don’t need to understand the science. I just need to know that I can stand here and feel I’m, you know, part of something … bigger. Belong.’

‘It’s probably the most any of us can ever hope for,’ Lol said. ‘To belong somewhere.’

They stood quietly for a few seconds. You could hear neither the sounds of the village nor the traffic on the main road, only birdsong and the grass wrenched from the meadow in the jaws of the Herefords.

The sun was already high. Caught in its glare, Jane, in her yellow crop-top, looked young and uncertain.

‘I need some information off you, Lol.’

‘For this … project?’

‘Sort of. I need to know who decides what happens around here. Like with the council and stuff. I mean, I think I know the basics. Just want to be sure before I make a move.’

‘A move?’

Oh, hell.

Jane looked at her feet.

‘Jane…’

‘What?’

‘This day off school, to work on the project…’

‘Look,’ Jane said, ‘it’s nearly the end of term, the exams are over, nobody really cares. And this is a major crisis. And anyway it’s connected with the project, which is about how artists have dealt with earth mysteries, the secret harmonies in the landscape.’

‘You’re not making this very clear, Jane.’

‘All right.’ Jane unfolded her arms and pointed. ‘You want it made clear, go and read it what it says on that sign.’

A small placard was affixed to the gate on the opposite side of the field. Lol wandered over. On the other side of the five-barred gate the path broadened out, and he saw that he was in the orchard at the back of his own cottage, which fronted on to Church Street. When he looked back, Jane’s ley was no longer obvious, which presumably was why she’d brought him down from the hill.

Lol adjusted his glasses and read what it said on the sign, which was headed HEREFORDSHIRE COUNCIL PLANNING DEPARTMENT.

What it said, basically, was that an application had been submitted to turn Coleman’s Meadow into an estate of twenty-four high-quality detached executive homes. It invited observations from the public.

Oh.

Lol turned, at a click of the latch on the gate, to find that Jane had followed him.

‘Only they’ll need to kill me first,’ Jane said.

6 The Sunset Chair

Joyce Aird’s drive sloped steeply down from the road in a tunnel of dark trees. It was like entering a badger set, until you emerged into a vastness of light.

‘Oh dear,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘Your sins always find you out, don’t they? Yes, bring that chair out, dear, we can sit together in the window. Bring your tea.’

The sun-lounge overlooked the valley, across the long village of Colwall and on and on over Herefordshire, all the way to the Black Mountains and Wales.

‘How did you know?’

Mrs Aird had the kind of West Midlands accent which wore anxiety like old and trusted slippers. She was about seventy-five, soft-featured and with lightly blonded hair.

‘Oh…’ Merrily put down the cane chair with its thick, padded seat. ‘It’s just that if anyone’s inquired about exorcism, the arrangement is that the office tells me or our secretary, Sophie. And nobody seems to have.’

‘Well, no, I never rang the Diocese. That’s just what I told Mr Spicer. He’s a good man, Mr Spicer, at the bottom of him, give him his due, but he’s a man, isn’t he? And he has had a lot of personal problems lately. I thought, he’s just not going to do anything, is he? And I was telling a friend – we used to be neighbours when I lived in the Forest of Dean and we’ve kept in touch, and I was telling her on the phone about what had happened, and she immediately said I should get the Rector to ask for you. That’s how I got the number. Her name’s Ingrid Sollars.’

‘Oh.’ That was OK; nothing wrong with Ingrid Sollars. ‘Yes, she was involved in … a problem we had. She’s a nice woman.’

‘A much stronger person than me, I’m afraid. I get very frightened about things I don’t … well, none of us understands them, do we? We can’t. We’re not supposed to. But Ingrid gave me your number and she said you’d take it seriously, but it would be best to go through the Rector, for political reasons. But I get so frightened, now, you see.’

Mrs Aird had a single, lonely chair in the window. Called it her sunset chair. Never missed a sunset. You could just see Herefordshire Beacon, on the far left, but nothing of the road, although you could hear the traffic above you, like a sporadic draught in the attic.

‘I used to think it was better this time of year with the holiday cottages starting to fill up and the village more like a real village. I’ve got to know some of the holiday people, and they’re quite nice. Gave me their keys to go in and make sure their cottages were all right, switch the heating on in winter. Made me feel useful and I thought it made them feel more welcome so maybe they’d stay for a bit. But I’ve had to give the keys back. I don’t like to go into a strange house alone any more. Well, would you?’

Merrily must have looked blank because Mrs Aird leaned forward, going into a whisper.

‘There was a poor man – a bit solitary – who’d come in the summer for weeks at a time and we never knew whether he was there or not, and one day … someone noticed all the flies.’

Mrs Aird gripped the arms of her chair, shuddering.

Merrily apprehensively balanced her tea, in its willow-pattern china cup, on her knee.

‘Doesn’t the Rector go to see people?’

‘Well, he does. Comes to see me about once a week, but then I’m a regular churchgoer. But some people don’t like it – see it as an intrusion, as if he’s going to evangelize. But of course Mr Spicer’s not like that, is he? And he’s got these other parishes to look after. And he’s on his own, too, now. Not been easy for him, with his wife … and his daughter. And everything that’s happened.’

Mrs Aird sat with her arms folded, looking expectant.

‘You were there when … the lorry driver…’

‘It was like an explosion, Mrs Watkins. I have a key to the church and I’d gone in early to put the flowers out because there was a funeral that day – Mrs Hatch, a mercy – and bang. I went rushing out, and the cab of the lorry was almost flattened on the driver’s side. He had to come out of the other door. I brought him in here and I gave him a cup of tea while we were waiting for the police and the breakdown people. He had his hands to his eyes, just thinking about it, and he said – I’ll always remember – he said, It was like a little sun.’

‘But it wasn’t a sunny day?’

‘It was later, but it was very dull then. Only about half past seven. When the police came, they breathalysed him straight away, and he was completely clear. They said he couldn’t have seen a light, but he insisted that was why he’d swerved, and he was a nice man – not young. One of the policemen said to me afterwards, Oh, I expect he fell asleep at the wheel and dreamed it. I said, That’s not fair, you don’t know…’

An orb, Merrily was thinking without much enthusiasm. Very fashionable with cable-TV ghosthunters, orbs. Bit of glare got recorded by the camera and it was an orb, a semi-formed manifestation. What Huw Owen called a spirit-egg, though you were never quite sure when Huw was being disparaging.

‘Did the driver think there was anything … strange about the light?’

‘Well, it was certainly strange, but I didn’t think there’d have been anything ghostly. Not then. But then there was Mr Loste … and the others.’

‘Mrs Cobham.’

‘She’s a bit…’ Mrs Aird put her nose in the air ‘… if you ask me. And not over-friendly. Mr Loste … well, some people think he’s a bit … what’s the word … ?’ Mrs Aird waved her cardiganed arms about in a random sort of way. ‘Maniac … manic. Obsessed with his music and his choirs … and, give him his due, he’s marvellous. He’s done wonders. But some people think he’s not reliable in other ways. And his friendship with the American woman who goes to the wells. Bit peculiar. But … he saw what he saw, and he’ll tell you as much, give him his due.’

‘I’m hoping to see him later. I’ll probably need to go back and see the Rector first.’

‘He’s not in,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘His car’s gone.’

How did she know that from down here? Had she got a periscope?

‘He’s got three parishes, you know. And all his problems.’

Merrily drank some tea.

Oh, well.

‘I’m … afraid I don’t really know anything about that. Don’t really like to ask him these things.’ Peering over her cup. ‘Sounds like I’m prying.’

Mrs Aird looked up at the ceiling and made a sad, wounded noise.

‘It was his daughter wrecked everything. Emily. Got a son as well, but he’s too young to cause trouble. Emily would be … what, eighteen? Mrs Spicer, Fiona, she was from Reading, somewhere like that, near London. She didn’t really like the country, and when Mr Spicer left the Army—You know what he was, don’t you?’

‘Erm … no.’

‘S … A … S.’

Mrs Aird mouthing it silently, like a breach of the Official Secrets Act.

‘Really?’

No wonder Syd Spicer was familiar with the Brecon Beacons.

‘Been out about eight years,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘But there’s something that doesn’t leave them, if you ask me.’

‘Mmm.’

Probably right. And they often didn’t leave the area. After many years based in Hereford, learning to become the most efficient killers in or out of uniform, they formed connections with the people and the land. Married local girls. Surprisingly – or maybe not – Spicer wouldn’t have been the first of them to become a priest.

‘Imagine the stress she must’ve been through,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘Never sure where in the world he was at any time, but knowing it was always going to be somewhere terribly dangerous.’

Merrily nodded. The SAS had probably the worst matrimonial record outside Hollywood. Breakfast with the wife, late supper in a cave in Afghanistan. Then retirement, still hyper, and they couldn’t settle down. The wives had to be very special to survive all that. Long periods alone, counting the Regiment graves in St Martin’s churchyard.

‘Sometimes…’ Mrs Aird leaned forward again ‘… Fiona came to talk to me on her own. She said he’d always promised her that when he came out of the Army they’d go back down south – bright lights and no sheep, she used to say. But then I suppose he found his faith. I don’t know where a man like that finds it.’

‘Oh … sometimes it’s just lying there, in your path, like an old coat, and before you know what you’re doing you’ve picked it up, tried it on and it seems to fit.’

‘That’s nice,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘I suppose.’

‘How did Mrs Spicer react to that?’

‘Oh, she stuck by him.’

Merrily smiled. Like Spicer had come out as a transsexual.

‘At least she knew where he was. He was a curate in Hereford, at first, and she didn’t mind that, thinking they’d move south as soon as he won his spurs, so to speak. They’d bought themselves a little house near his in-laws down in Reading, and they’d spend holidays there. But then he was offered Wychehill and the surrounding parishes – a bit closer to London, but it turned out to be the worst of both worlds. And the girl, Emily, she hated every minute she had to spend here. Off with her friends to nightclubs, every chance she got. And that, of course, led to boys and … the other thing. You know?’

‘No … what?’

‘That’s what…’ Mrs Aird leaned further forward as if the place was bugged. ‘That’s what broke up their marriage. The stress of dealing with the girl.’ She paused.

‘Drugs.’

‘Syd’s daughter?’

‘It’s everywhere, my dear. Young people can’t seem to face normal life any more, can they? Mr Spicer’s daughter … even Mr Devereaux’s elder son, when he gave up his job with the hunt. Went clean off the rails when it was banned, and they say he went on drugs. Luckily, he came round. But Mr Spicer’s daughter ended up in rehab.’

‘Oh.’

‘So you can imagine what it was like for them when the Royal Oak changed hands.’

‘Sorry?’

‘And that’s very much part of it, if you ask me. The evil.’

‘Evil … ?’

‘Ingrid said you weren’t the kind to dismiss it like so many of the modern clergy do.’

Mrs Aird looked out of her wall-to-wall picture window across the valley with its pastures and orchards.

‘Expect I’ll have to go, soon. You wouldn’t believe how often the houses change hands up here. It’s like Mr Walford says – he’s disabled but a very intelligent man, we do crosswords together – and he often says, This is what I always wanted, a place up here, and then when you get it you suddenly wake up one day and realize you’re too old for it. This is not a place to be old, Mrs Watkins, though I’ll miss my sunsets.’

Merrily looked around the room, everything modern and convenient and sparkling in the sunshine.

‘The Royal Oak,’ she said. ‘Is that a pub?’

‘Pub?’ Mrs Aird said. ‘It’s the gateway to hell. I don’t even want to talk about that, if you don’t mind. I’ve had all the locks changed and I shut myself away at weekends, go to bed with my mobile phone in case they cut the wires. And unfortunately it’s not something you can do anything about.’

‘Is there anything I can do for you while I’m here?’

‘No, I’m quite self-sufficient really. I’ve been a widow nearly twenty years, and I can cope with most things.’

‘Everybody needs help,’ Merrily said.

Mrs Aird looked down into her lap for a moment; when she looked up she seemed, in some way, younger, her expression more focused.

‘If you don’t mind me saying so, Mrs Watkins, you seem a nice girl. But you don’t look very much like my idea of a … you know.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry.’ Merrily looked down at her sweatshirt. ‘The Rector asked me to … I don’t think he wanted to draw attention to me being here.’

‘No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Ingrid says you know what you’re doing. It’s just that I don’t have many friends in Wychehill, and this girl … that’s what worries me most.’

And there might be another one, Syd Spicer had said, which is … a bit weird. Joyce Aird can tell you. They won’t talk to me about it.

‘She’s a single mother, Mrs Watkins. She’s on her own in that house. And she’s had the worst of it. She’s … this is why something needs to be done.’

‘I’m a single mother, too. I have a daughter of seventeen.’

‘You can’t be old enough for…’ Mrs Aird’s eyes lost their focus. ‘Oh, you lose touch at my age. Everybody under fifty looks like a child.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Hannah.’

‘She lives in Wychehill?’

‘Thinks she’s possessed,’ Mrs Aird said. ‘It’s not good, is it?’

7 The Dead of Ledwardine

Lol let Jane into his terraced cottage in Church Street. In the living room, the sunlight jetted through the window-hung crystals – Jane’s house-warming present – making quivering rainbow balls on the walls and the face of the Boswell guitar. Making the guitar seem to vibrate with possibilities which would vanish like the rainbow balls as soon as he picked it up.

‘Well, go on.’ Jane planting herself next to the writing desk. ‘Ring them.’

‘I don’t know the—’

‘I have it here. Copied it from the notice.’

Jane consulted her right wrist, read out the row of numbers biroed on it. She was left-handed. Sinistral. Therefore dangerously unpredictable. How was he supposed to handle this? Encourage her to go ahead with what seemed like a valid protest? Or, bearing in mind Merrily’s situation in the village, do what he could to talk her out of it?

‘And the code, of course, is 01432,’ Jane said.

Lol rang the council’s planning department, Jane drumming her fingers on the desk the whole time. What he eventually learned, from a guy called Charles, was in no way likely to wind her down.

‘He says it’s up for discussion next week.’

‘They’ll make a decision then?’

‘The impression I got is that there’ve been no objections. The site being fairly secluded, inside the development line as laid down in the local plan, and not visible from the village centre. Perfect housing site.’

‘But it’s on a … Why didn’t you tell him it’s on a crucial—?’

‘Jane—’

‘Yeah, yeah, the council doesn’t believe they exist. Anywhere else with, like, a really major figure like Alfred Watkins, there’d be a statue in High Town, and all the key leys, like Capuchin Way, would be marked by brass plaques. But this bunch of crass, self-serving tossers—’

‘Jane, the government’s demanding new housing all over the country. And there is a case for Ledwardine needing … starter homes?’

‘And like, luxury executive dwellings fit into that category?’

Lol sighed. They’d called in at the Eight Till Late to quiz Big Jim Prosser on the ownership of Coleman’s Meadow. Jim had identified a farmer called G. J. Murray, who lived at Lyonshall, about seven miles away. This Murray had inherited Coleman’s Meadow from his aunt and had been touting it to development companies ever since.

Which was the way of it. People wrote to the Hereford Times, moaning about all the locally born young people being driven out of the county because they couldn’t get onto the housing ladder, but when they had a chance to develop some field for housing, it was usually luxury executive dwellings. Where the safe money was.

‘And, like, even with starter homes, most of them just go to people from outside,’ Jane said. ‘All the guys in my class who were born around here, they just can’t wait to get the hell out … rent an inner-city apartment near some cool shops. Or emigrate. We’re a nomadic race.’

‘Unfortunately, the council can’t operate on that basis.’

Didn’t you just hate playing the responsible adult? Especially when she was right. They really needed more executive homes, another two dozen SUVs clogging the village?

‘Anyway, it’s not going to happen, is it, Laurence? We’re going to get it stopped.’

‘We?’ Lol said. ‘We?’

‘Either you’re for me or against me.’

‘Jane, I am one hundred per cent for you. It’s just that we’re not talking about protecting an ancient monument, are we?’

‘Of course we are … sort of.’

Jane sat down and drew a diagram on Lol’s lyric-pad. Cole Hill … Coleman’s Meadow track … tumulus … market place … Ledwardine Church … ancient crossroads … standing stone.

‘… Six, seven points if you include the market place. It’s beyond dispute. If I had a big enough map, I could probably trace it all the way to the Neolithic settlements in the Black Mountains. It’s a living ancient monument.’

‘Still be there in essence, though, won’t it, even if they build on it?’

‘It won’t be visible. This is a genuine, existing old straight track, probably an ancient ritual route, right? By the time they’ve finished, the way the land slopes, you probably won’t even be able to see Cole Hill from the church any more for all these identical luxury homes with their naff conservatories. It’s a crime against the ancient spirit. It’ll sour the energy!’

‘Energy,’ Lol said. ‘That’s not something you can easily see, is it?’

‘It’s something our remote ancestors were, like, instinctively aware of.’

Jane went into lecturer mode, telling him things he already kind of knew: how the old stones had been erected on blind springs and the leys had energized and sustained the land and the people who lived on the land. How the oldest churches had also been built on ancient pagan sites because even in medieval times the people still remembered. And, of course, the leys were also lines of contact with … the ancestors.

‘The dead. Burial mounds. Circular churchyards growing up on the sites of Neolithic stone circles. The spirits of the dead were believed to walk the alignments so, in the old days, a coffin would have to be carried to the church along a particular track to prepare the spirit for the afterlife. It was a crucial thing. We should get Mum to reinstate it.’

‘It’s a theory,’ Lol said, nervous.

‘Ties in with folklore the world over, Lol. What it means is that the path through the church to the holy hill is the village’s link with its ancestors … its origins. You obliterate the path, you sever the link, and Ledwardine loses its … its soul!’

Jane sprang up, as though the ancient energy was surging underneath the cottage floor.

‘Who do I complain to? Who do I lobby?’

‘The MP? Downing Street?’ Where it would go into the shredder marked fruitcakes. ‘Maybe best to start with the local councillor.’

‘Gavin Ashe?’

‘Gavin Ashe resigned, Jane. New guy is Lyndon Pierce. Lives at the end of Virgingate Lane.’

‘Which party?’

‘Non-party. He’s an independent.’

‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it? That means he doesn’t have to follow any party line on housing, right? It’s a start.’

Lol said nothing. ‘Independent’ also meant you were free to jump into anybody’s pocket.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose you could approach him on a preservation-of-heritage basis. If you show him the picture in The Old Straight Track.’

‘Erm … yeah,’ Jane said. ‘I could…’

‘Because I’d guess that area hasn’t changed at all since Watkins was around in the 1920s?’

‘No. Probably not.’ She looked uncertain, suddenly. ‘Right. So that’s Lyndon … ?’

‘Pierce. He’s a chartered accountant. Jane…’ Lol didn’t really want to ask this. ‘Coleman’s Meadow is shown in the book, isn’t it?’

‘Look, Lol, you couldn’t…’ Jane frowned. ‘Obviously Watkins couldn’t include every ley in the county.’

‘You mean, no picture?’

‘Well, no, but that doesn’t—’

‘The most perfect, visible ley and he didn’t take a picture of it?’

‘Maybe he just didn’t use it.’ Jane was backing awkwardly towards the door. ‘Maybe it didn’t come out, I don’t know. Don’t look at me in that sorrowful, pitying—’

‘So, basically, this is not an Alfred Watkins ley, this is … a Jane Watkins ley.’

Lol thought he saw a glitter of tears. This was about more than just a ley line and the soul of the village. It was also about being nearly eighteen and the realization that you were entering a world where changes were seldom for the better.

‘Jane, did … did Watkins even mention this line, or even Ledwardine?’

‘No.’ Jane looked down at her feet. ‘It’s the one thing I can’t understand.’

‘Oh.’

‘It’s the real thing, though, Lol.’ She looked up, defiant again. ‘I mean you thought it was. You weren’t just—?’ ‘Well, I suppose it doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t find it.’

‘Now you’re humouring me. Don’t do that.’

‘No, really. He might have discovered it too late to get it into the book.’

‘You think?’

‘It’s possible. And I mean, I’m no kind of expert, but it does seem like a perfect ley.’

Jane looked him in the eyes. ‘So you think I’m doing the right thing.’

A weighty moment. For a second or two, Lol felt the presence in the room of the cottage’s last owner, Lucy Devenish, Jane’s friend and mentor. His, too. Dead for over two years now. But sometimes when he came in at night he could still believe he’d seen, in the fractured instant of snapping on the lights, the folds of Lucy’s trademark poncho hanging over the newel post at the bottom of the stairs.

‘I suppose that depends very much on what you’re planning to do,’ he said carefully.

When Jane had gone, Lol could still feel her agitation in the air, bobbing and flickering around like the rays from the crystals.

He picked up the Boswell guitar. Prof Levin had studio time available in the second half of September, which left less than three months to develop this horribly difficult second-album-after-the-comeback. The one which had to be appreciably better than the first or your career was in meltdown.

Again.

Lol sat down on the sofa with the Boswell and tried again with ‘Cloisters’, a mainly instrumental number which, no matter how he moved it around, and despite the experiments with Nick Drake tuning, continued to sound ordinary. As in flat. As in lifeless. More or less like every other song he’d half-finished in the past several weeks – a period in which, otherwise, he’d felt contented, balanced … normal. It was surely too much of a cliché that you had to be emotionally raw, broken, ragged, wretched or lovelorn to write a worthwhile song.

Maybe it just needed a string arrangement.

He lay back on the sofa with his arms around the guitar, an image coming to him of the dead of Ledwar-dine in some half-formed procession from the steeple to the holy hill, bisected by a stream of unheeding SUVs.

8 Dead to the World

Caractacus.

It was carved into a stone slab by a gate in a hedge enclosing a house and an empty carport. A flat, blank house built of the same squarish stones as the church. It was about a minute’s walk down the hill from the Rectory but very much on its own.

Merrily had a sudden sense of isolation, vulnerability. She shook herself.

Caractacus, as most schoolkids learned, was the ancient British hero defeated by the Romans and taken back to Rome, where he was treated with some respect. The final conflict was supposed to have taken place on Herefordshire Beacon, but that was only a legend, discredited, apparently, by historians.

If Caractacus had retired here at least he’d have been spared a view of the Beacon. The house was tucked so tightly into the hill that all you could see behind it was a steep field vanishing rapidly into the forestry.

To get to the front door, Merrily had to push away a sapling taller than she was. Disbelieving, she inspected a leaf.

An oak? Within a couple of years it’d be pushing the glass in. In thirty years it would probably have the house down. Tim Loste must surely be planning to transplant it somewhere – but where? His front garden was the size of a smallish bathroom and there clearly wasn’t much space behind the house, either.

On the wall beside the front door was a bell pull. Merrily could hear the jingling inside the house. No other sounds. She waited at least two minutes before edging around the oak and walking back to the road, pulling her mobile from her shoulder bag.

‘Couldn’t check out a couple of things for me, could you, Sophie?’

‘Tell me.’

‘The Royal Oak. It’s a pub not far from Wychehill which seems to have undergone some kind of transformation, making it … unpopular. Might be something on the Net.’

‘I may even have heard something about this. I’ll look into it. Anything else?’

‘Syd Spicer. Is it true he’s ex-Regiment?’

‘I don’t know. The Bishop would be able to tell us for certain, but he’s taken his grandson to a county cricket match in Worcester. That’s rather interesting, Merrily, isn’t it? I’ll find out what I can about Mr Spicer’s history which, given the traditions of the SAS, is likely to be very little. What are you doing now?’

‘Trying to understand what’s happening here.’ Merrily looked up the hill towards the church, concealed by dark deciduous trees. ‘Spicer’s right about this place. You wouldn’t know you were in it.’

She’d left the twenty-year-old Volvo in the parking bay in front of the church. She walked up past it, seeing nobody, following the grey-brown churchyard wall into a short, steep cutting which accessed a lane running parallel to the main road but on a higher level, like a sloping gallery.

Time to seek help to remove the evil from our midst, Joyce Aird had apparently said to Syd Spicer.

Midst of what?

All the same, she brought her small pectoral cross out of her bag and slipped it on, letting it drop down under the T-shirt. You could never be too careful.

Hannah’s cottage was low and pebble-dashed and painted a buttermilk colour. Rustic porch and a clematis, and a mountain bike propped up under a front window.

It was just gone one p.m. and the sun was hot and high. Hannah was wearing shorts and a stripy sleeveless top revealing a butterfly tattoo on one shoulder.

She didn’t have sunken eyes or a deathly pallor.

‘I feel dead stupid now.’ She was maybe a year or two younger than Merrily: pale hair in a ponytail, no makeup, a diamond nose-stud. ‘I’m glad you’re not … you know…’ Pointing at her neck.

‘Too hot for all that.’ Merrily had shed the sweatshirt, was down to her green Gomer Parry Plant Hire T-shirt. ‘I used to have a black one with a dog collar on it in white but I couldn’t find it this morning.’

‘It’s OK, I know you’re the real thing. Joyce Aird rang.’

‘Mmm. Thought she might.’

‘Nothing wrong with Joyce,’ Hannah said. ‘Better than local radio, normally, so it’s killing her keeping quiet about this.’

Hannah wasn’t local either. Northern accent. East Lancashire, maybe.

‘This is nice.’ Merrily looked around. ‘You live here on your own?’

‘With my son. He’s nine. This is my parents’ holiday cottage, had it years and years. They said we could come down here, me and Robin, after my husband left us. Last year, that was, and I’m still feeling a bit, you know, impermanent. You coming in?’

The cottage was tiny, no more than three or four small rooms, Merrily guessed. The living room was furnished like a caravan – bed-settee with drawers underneath, a table that went flat to the wall, a Calor-gas stove in the fireplace. Hannah guided her to a compact easy chair with a yellow cushion and put herself on the edge of the bed-settee. The single window was wide open to a honeysuckle scent.

‘Luckily, you caught me on the right day. I’ve a part-time job at the tourist office in Ledbury. Three days a week. Keeps us going. Do you want tea or coffee or a cold drink?’

‘Could we maybe talk first?’

‘Yeh, ’course. I’m afraid I’ve not been to church since Robin was christened. Bad that, isn’t it? I might go if it was a bit smaller. But it’s horrible, our church. I mean, isn’t it? You don’t feel anything particularly holy in there, that’s for sure.’

‘It seems very … pleasant in here, though.’

‘Well, it’s very small. Had to put a lot of furniture in storage. But it … Oh, I see what you mean. No, there’s nothing wrong here. We used to come year after year and for weekends when I was a kid. I love it. It’s gorgeous round here, i’n’t it? No, there’s nothing like that here.’

‘Well, that’s good.’

‘I did feel really free again, biking to work down the hill to Ledbury. Bit hard going coming back, but it keeps you fit.’

‘Lot of long hills. Don’t think I could do it.’

‘Your leg muscles ache like anything at first, but it’s worth it. Listen, I’m sorry, I’ve never been in this sort of … I was going to look for your website on the computer at work, but there was always somebody there. I don’t want you to feel I’m wasting your time, that’s all. I don’t even know if there’s a charge.’

‘Er … no.’

‘Bit nervous now,’ Hannah said.

‘Actually,’ Merrily said, ‘I’ve never had a case of possession. Shameful thing for a so-called exorcist to say, but there we are. So … what’s it like?’

‘What’s it like?’ Hannah grinned. ‘You having me on? I don’t know what to say. I’m not a person that gets scared. I’d love a dog, mind, but I’d have to leave him in when I went to work and that wouldn’t be fair.’

‘Got the same problem, Hannah. Sorry, I don’t even know your last name.’

‘Bradley. That’s my married name. It’s a bit better than what I was called before – Catterall – so I thought at least the bugger can leave me that. Look – this is just between us, right?’

‘Don’t worry.’

‘I think about it all the time, but it’s still hard finding the words,’ Hannah said.

‘It was next to me. That close. I’m not kidding.’

Spacing it out with her hands, looking at Merrily for signs of disbelief. Merrily just nodded. Hannah wet her lips with her tongue.

‘Mouth’s gone all dry now. Can I get a … ?’

Hannah brought a can of Diet Pepsi for each of them and sat herself down again, rolling the cold can between her hands.

‘It’s a long hill, and I’m not that brave yet that I can just let go. I’d be sod-all use in the Tour de France, I tell you.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know why I’m laughing, I was—’

‘Which side was it on?’

‘Towards the middle of the road. That side. I keep as close as I can to the verge ’cos some of these drivers are bloody maniacs.’

‘And it was … this was definitely another bike.’

‘What it’s like … it’s like when two of you are going along side by side and you turn your head to say something and … nothing! Soon as you turn your head … gone. First couple of times I was thinking it was me, how you do.’

‘This is the daytime?’

‘Morning … afternoon. I don’t take the bike out at night, I’m not stupid.’

‘What happens when you don’t turn your head?’

‘That’s what I was coming to. If you don’t look, you can see it. If you keep your eyes on the road ahead and you don’t—Sounds daft, I know. In fact, that’s wrong. You can’t see it, that’s not what I meant. You’re just fully aware of it. It absolutely completely exists. Two of you biking along side by side. And you can feel the wind coming at you along the hedge, but on the other side you’re shielded from it by … by this other cyclist. Really. Honest to God.’

‘And how do you feel when that’s happening?’

‘At first … just weird. Uncomfortable. So I’d keep turning and looking, just to get rid of it. And then … Oh God … I was so busy looking to the side I nearly went into the back of a tractor and trailer that’d just pulled in to the side. Another second I’d’ve been splat. Great big metal trailer. Go into that on a bike it’s broken bones at least, Mrs Watkins.’

‘Merrily.’

‘That’s nice. Merr-ily. Have you got to be psychic for your job?’

‘Not essential. Sometimes it can be counter-productive. What happened after the trailer incident?’

‘We’ve come to the bit I don’t like.’

‘I don’t think I’d like any of it.’

‘What happened … I thought about what’d become of Robin if I was in an orthopaedic bed for six months, so I decided that if I ever again got the feeling there was somebody cycling next to me I’d have to stop looking to one side.’

‘Did you … ever think what it might be?’

Hannah shook her head.

‘I didn’t think too hard. You’d go daft, wouldn’t you? What I was really afraid of, to be quite honest, was that it might be a brain tumour or something. When you’ve got a child, these things…’

‘I know.’

‘So it was almost a relief when it…’

‘What was the bit you didn’t like?’

‘Well, like I say, if you keep on and you don’t look, it just becomes more and more real. And close. I didn’t like that. It was a day like this, maybe not quite so hot, but I could smell his sweat. And yet it was cold. Very cold, suddenly.’

‘It was a man, then.’

‘Oh yeh. I could smell his sweat. There’s something about a man’s sweat, i’n’t there? And his tobacco. Tobacco breath. Not like cigarettes – I used to smoke till I had Robin – this was real strong tobacco breath. And after a while – I’m just concentrating on pedalling as fast I can, see, just gripping the handlebars and gritting my teeth, no way was I going to stop – I was feeling his thoughts. Just look at my arms, Merrily, I’ve got goose bumps thinking about it. Feeling his thoughts! Not – don’t get me wrong – not what he was thinking, exactly. It was more the colour of his thoughts. The texture. The feeling of his thoughts. I’m not putting this very well, am I?’

‘You’re putting it brilliantly well, actually. You must’ve been very scared by now.’

‘I was afterwards. When I got to work the first time they thought I must be ill. My colleague at the information centre, she wanted to send me home in a taxi, but I needed to work. Talk to people. Get over it. I did go home by taxi that night, mind. Had to go back next day on the bus to pick up the bike.’

‘Anything happen then?’

‘No. It never does when you’re afraid it might.’

‘When you say you weren’t scared till afterwards…’

‘Because you’re too much like … too much like a part of it to be scared. That’s what I meant by possessed. He was there. He was breathing all over me. I was wearing shorts – this was a week or so ago, this was another time. I was wearing shorts like these, only a bit tighter, and he – I swear to God, I felt his hand on my thigh, and I was angry, instinctively, you know? Gerroff! And he bloody chuckled. He chuckled.’

‘You heard him chuckle?’

‘I felt him chuckle. And that’s worse. You feel him chuckling inside your head. That’s what I meant by being possessed.’

‘How long did it last, usually?’

‘Probably no more than a few seconds, but a lot can happen in a few seconds when it’s something that’s never happened before.’

‘And how many times?’

‘Three. No, four. Until I realized what was happening and just … got off.’

‘When you got off the bike, it was all right?’

‘I realized then that it only happened when I was on the bike. As if I was actually generating it by pedalling.’

‘And there was nothing wrong with you physically. Unlike the others, though, you never actually saw anything.’

‘Never.’

‘When did it last happen?’

‘Earlier this week.’

‘Same man?’

‘Oh, yeh.’

‘What happened?’

‘Bugger-all, ’cos I jumped off quick this time and wheeled the bike along till I got on the main road.’

‘Just to get this right, this is the hill where you come out of this lane, at the church, and then go past the Rectory … down past there.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Could you just tell me … when you were feeling his thoughts, what were they like?’

‘Dark, usually,’ Hannah said. ‘Angry.’

‘Angry with you?’

‘No. He doesn’t know me. I’m sure he doesn’t. He just gets into my space. It’s like he just needs somebody’s space to get into, and it doesn’t matter who you are.’

‘So who was he angry at?’

‘Something bigger than me. Everything. God? I couldn’t say.’

‘And the time something touched your leg…’

‘You’re thinking it might’ve been a leaf or something, aren’t you? That’s what I thought. And I’m not going to insist it wasn’t. I just know what it felt like. Are you married, Merrily? You are allowed to, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, you are. And I used to be.’

‘Join the club. All I’m trying to say … when you’re in bed with a bloke, right? And you wake up and he’s still asleep … but his hand’s sliding up your nightie? Like that. Shall we have a cup of tea? Tea’s better on a hot day, sometimes.’

Merrily smiled. ‘Love one.’

Hannah stood up and opened the sliding door into a kitchen that must once have been part of the same room.

‘Blokes, eh?’ She looked over her shoulder at Merrily. ‘Hand up your nightie and dead to the world.’

9 Mutated

Walking out of Hannah’s gate into the warmth of the afternoon, Merrily felt mixed emotions circling her like bees: primarily, a certain wild excitement that was close to the edge of fear. You realized how much time you spent coasting the safe surf between the hard sandbank of scepticism and the unfathomable deep blue abyss.

She stepped down through the cutting, with the church on her left and the sun in her eyes and the phone chiming in her bag. Aware of the layers of Wychehill. The layers of experience.

‘The Royal Oak,’ Sophie said, as she reached the Volvo. ‘Some things you might want to know.’

‘Go on.’

‘I have some information from the Internet which I can send to you at home, if you aren’t coming back to Hereford. However, I ran into Inspector Bliss and took the liberty of mentioning it. He said he’d be most interested to talk to you.’

‘About the Royal Oak?’

‘Discreetly,’ Sophie said.

It was probably worth going back. Merrily had a christening in Ledwardine tomorrow afternoon; if she dealt with parish business in the morning she could probably come back here on Wednesday and talk to Tim Loste and Preston Devereaux before the public meeting.

Feeling tired now. Up before six a.m. and two trips to Wychehill, and she hadn’t eaten yet.

Still … She smoked half a cigarette, then turned the car around and drove down past Ledbury … Trumpet … Stoke Edith. Midsummer in a couple of days, the first hard little apples like green nuts on the twisty trees and the hops on the wires. A potent landscape of cider and beer.

She felt light-headed. It was humbling and slightly shocking when, amongst all the self-delusion and the wishful thinking and the mind games, you encountered someone as guilelessly direct as Hannah Bradley.

Sophie said, ‘My attempts to log on to the Royal Oak’s actual website were frustrated by the inadequacy of our software. Apparently, the Diocese has failed to provide us with something called Flash Seven.’

‘Anything to save a few quid.’

‘From what I’ve been reading about the Royal Oak elsewhere, I’m quite grateful we don’t have it. There you are. You may understand some of this.’

Merrily went round the desk to peer at the screen over Sophie’s shoulder.

HIP-HOP … RAGGA … GARAGE … HOUSE…

DRUM’N’BASS … BHANGRA…

… IN THE MALVERNS?

Believe it!!! A big old country pub – used to

be all darts matches and Rotary Club –

has mutated…

‘My first experience of nightclub websites, I confess.’ Sophie said.

‘You surprise me.’

‘To save you some time, this establishment is just across the boundary into Worcestershire – and out of the diocese. Another good reason not to get involved.’

Sophie scrolled up to uncover a picture of a bejewelled black man called DJ Xex. Instantly dismissing him with a contemptuous flick of the mouse.

‘It appears that the Royal Oak is now owned by a Mr Khan – apparently quite a well-known entrepreneur in the West Midlands?’

Sophie glanced at Merrily, who shook her head. Never heard of him.

‘Quite a number of local press reports about local people calling on the appropriate authority to have Mr Khan’s licence withdrawn. I’ve printed them out for you.’

‘But you didn’t print the picture of DJ Xex for the noticeboard?’

‘This would be less amusing to you, Merrily,’ Sophie said, ‘if you had to live with it.’

Possibly true. All the innocent fun of inner-city club-land in the romantic Malverns: punters swarming in every weekend from the teenage wastelands, cars screaming through the village at one a.m., windows open, boom, boom, boom. Kids stopping to throw up in front gardens, relieve themselves in the churchyard. Have sex on graves … allegedly. And now a fatal road accident of the kind that people always insisted had been waiting to happen.

‘Sounds as if the victims of Saturday’s crash had spent the evening at the Royal Oak.’ Merrily gathered up the on-line news stories Sophie had printed. ‘Colliding with the chairman of the parish council, returning from a wedding.’

Sophie winced.

The stories were mainly from the Malvern Gazette: petitions to Hereford and Worcester councils, letters to MPs. Counter-allegations of NIMBYism and racism by the leader of a youth project who thought the restyled Royal Oak was the best thing to happen in the Malverns this century.

‘What did Frannie Bliss say?’

‘We didn’t have much time to talk. He asked how you were, and I explained that you were looking into an alleged occurrence at the eastern end of the diocese and then simply asked if he knew anything about the Royal Oak.’

‘Or, as it’s now apparently called…’

‘Don’t.’

Merrily smiled at Sophie.

‘Inn Ya Face? That’s quite good, really.’

‘In Elgar’s hills.’ Sophie’s lower body trembled slightly as if the ground beneath her feet had shifted. ‘One day, Merrily, I think we may be pushed just slightly too far.’

‘I wonder…’ Merrily tapped her lower lip with a pen ‘… if that’s why Syd Spicer’s a little sceptical. I wonder if he thinks that the ghost of a traditional cyclist – an image symbolic of gentler times – is someone’s idea for stirring the pot.’

Sophie raised an eyebrow.

‘It happens. Just occasionally. But then Syd doesn’t seem to know about Hannah Bradley.’

‘You found that convincing?’

‘It’s about as convincing as it gets.’

‘The girl thinks she’s been sexually assaulted by … ?’

‘I wouldn’t put it that strongly, and neither does she. Quite a healthy attitude towards it, really. That’s one of the things that makes it so credible.’

‘What will you do?’

‘Collate all the reports. Try and find out if anybody’s ever been killed on that road on a bike. If I can tie it down to an individual, the obvious answer would be a straightforward Requiem Eucharist in the church, with as many of the witnesses as we could get. Plus the Rector, of course.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Sophie picked up a notepad. ‘The Rector.’

‘You checked him out.’

‘Ordained eight years ago.’ Sophie raised her glasses on their chain to read her shorthand notes. ‘Installed as Rector of Wychehill, with two other neighbouring parishes, in autumn 2003. Renowned, apparently, for his strenuous youth-work – previously, he ran a shop in Eign Street specializing in Outward Bound-type pursuits. Mountaineering, geology. And before that, his career, as you say, was with the Army. The file doesn’t mention which regiment, but then, if he served in Hereford, it hardly needs to.’

‘No.’

Merrily was thinking of Spicer’s distinctly unemotional response to the carnage at Wychehill, the minimalism of his kitchen, his total self-reliance. I’m very capable.

‘My experience of the Special Air Service, Merrily, is that they tend to dispense information on a need-to-know basis.’

‘If at all,’ Merrily said.

Remembering a story someone had told her about a Hereford dentist with a serving-SAS patient who’d dropped in for a heavy-duty root-canal filling and – by way of an exercise – had declined the anaesthetic.

Might have been apocryphal, probably not.

10 Firewall

Mentioning the Royal Oak to Frannie Bliss … this had been like opening the door of the CID room and rolling a grenade through the gap.

They were in the café in the Cathedral cloisters, with a Gothic-framed view of the Bishop’s garden. Bliss was doing his eager-fox smile, raspberry jam from his doughnut oozing between his fingers.

‘Clever little bastard, though, Merrily. His old feller’s some kind of professor of Islamic Studies in Wolver-hampton. Also, a consultant to the Home Office.’

He evidently thought she knew more than she actually did.

‘The lad’s been doing his bit, too, advising the council on community relations in Worcester. Oh, and he also runs an ethnic art gallery in Malvern, where the Prince of Wales once attended a reception.’

‘Yes,’ Merrily said, ‘I’m sure the Prince of Wales would have enjoyed that, but—’

‘In fact, so snugly has Raji fitted himself into the system that the little shit was actually one of the speakers at a symposium last year on new directions in community policing. Having earlier – this may surprise you, or not – had lunch with my esteemed ruler.’

‘Annie Howe? Why would that surprise me? Frannie, just give me the building blocks … How does this guy come to be the owner of a country pub in the Malverns?’

‘Oh, and then, following the symposium – attended by civic leaders and other useless suits – I get meself formally introduced to young Mr Khan. Merrily, he patronized me.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘“From Liverpool, then, sergeant.”’ Bliss putting on this poncy public school accent and a twisted smirk. ‘“That’s quite a cultural quantum leap, isn’t it?”’

‘He called you sergeant?’

Bliss leaned back. His red hair was receding slightly, and something throbbed in his temple.

‘Full name Rajab Ali Khan. Twenty-seven years old, and already the owner of – as well as the nice gallery – nightclubs in Worcester and Kidderminster. And now, yeh, the Royal Oak Inn, as was, in the heart of the glorious Malverns. I think he even had grant-aid. He’s good at that.’

He put down the remaining half of his jammy doughnut. On the side plate, it looked like debris from a post-mortem.

‘And at this point I’ve gorra say, Merrily, that I believe Raji to be a main player in the supply of a substantial percentage of Class A drugs entering the Border counties.’

Merrily stirred her coffee. ‘You know that?’

‘No, I said I believe it.’

‘I believe in God, Frannie, but—’

‘And I also believe there’s a firewall around him, for reasons I’m either not sufficiently elevated to have been told about or because…’ Bliss picked up his doughnut. ‘Ah, what’s the point? The service is in flux again, and the best we can do is keep our noses down until it’s over.’

Merrily said nothing. He meant the proposed merger of West Mercia Police with two other regions, creating a superforce supposedly more capable of tackling terrorism and major crime but probably in the process also saving the Home Office milllions of pounds by raising the bar and reducing aggravated burglary to a misdemeanour.

He held up a hand, a raspberry globule like a stigmata in the centre of the palm. He was a Roman Catholic, fond of symbolism.

‘A warning, Merrily. We’re becoming hopelessly politicized. It’s no longer about nailing villains to the wall.’

Merrily poured more coffee.

‘Can I take it Mr Khan is a practising Muslim?’

‘Practising? Bastard’s got it off to a fine art. See, these days, if there’s a Muslim who speaks out publicly against terrorism, as Raji’s been known to do – I’m a Brit, don’t I sound like a Brit? – some clowns tend to be less concerned about what else he’s into.’

‘And you think drugs are passing through the Royal Oak in significant quantities? I mean, what are we talking about – crack, speed, heroin … ?’

‘And acid,’ Bliss said. ‘Acid is back. Turn off your mind, relax and float off a sixth-floor balcony.’

‘Is all this widely known?’

‘What is widely known, but not widely highlighted, is that there are suddenly more drugs – by far – on the streets of these old market towns than we can hope to control. Coke and cannabis – recreational stuff for the middle classes – and cheap nasties for the kids. I expect Jane—’

‘I’d know.’

‘What they all say, Merrily. Moorfield … a famously liberal headteacher.’

‘School director.’

‘Eh?’

‘What he prefers to be called.’

‘God help us.’ Bliss took an angry bite out of his doughnut. ‘I mean, look at Pershore. You imagine anything like that happening in Pershore?’

‘Remind me.’

‘Lad called Chris Smith found shot through the head in his van in a car park near the river. Signs of torture. Mouth taped, cigarette burns. Other things I won’t describe with food around. Local CID didn’t know him – no form – but subsequently identified as quite a prominent local dealer, operating in the area for over a year.’

‘Linked to this Raji Khan, you think?’

‘We don’t know. Less than half an hour from the Oak. If you were to twist my arm … Aaah.’ Bliss made a frustrated hissing noise. ‘Lot of us coming round to thinking it should all be decriminalized, everything you can smoke, swallow or inject. We’re pouring billions down the pan, in man-hours and paperwork, and we’re losing the battle. And we’re bored with it and all the ancillary villainy by brain-dead street-trash supporting a thousand-a-week habit. Some point, we’re gonna back away, wash our hands, say fuck it.’

Bliss put up both hands, pushing it all away.

‘And I have told you nothing, Merrily. In fact, we haven’t even had this little meeting in the lovely old cloisters that your lot pinched off my lot in fifteen-whenever-it-was.’

‘Like that, huh?’

‘You’re a mate.’ Bliss beamed bleakly. ‘And I like to be there for me mates. And I hope you feel the same way.’

‘So what you’re saying … if I happen to come across anything in Wychehill that might be pertinent to the inquiries you’re not allowed to make…’

‘Not actively encouraged to make. Yes, that would be helpful. You priests, so intuitive. Even the Prods.’ Bliss tucked the remains of his doughnut into his mouth. ‘Just one thing – if you do happen to learn anything—’

‘Call you at home.’

‘Exactly. Or on the mobile, if urgent.’ He fingered up a bead of jam left on his plate and licked it off. ‘So … the good people of Wychehill are claiming that all the extra traffic and the nasty music has disturbed something a bit…’

Bliss waggled his fingers and made spooky woo, woo noises.

‘Sometimes, Merrily, I don’t know how you keep this up.’

It was very warm now, and the Cathedral green was smudged with people in T-shirts and summer frocks, some of them camped around the recently installed life-size bronze sculpture of a pensive Sir Edward Elgar gazing up at the tower.

A teenage girl sitting by the plinth was wearing cans and had an iPod in her lap. Walking back towards the gatehouse, Merrily thought it unlikely that the kid was listening to The Enigma Variations. If it had been Jane, not in a million years; to Jane, unless attitudes had changed, Elgar was just some pompous, imperialist old fart.

I’m not keeping up any more, that’s the trouble.

Merrily stopped in dismay, looking back at the Cathedral tower, under major repair again – scaffolding around it like a thousand interlinked Zimmer frames. And she was not yet forty, but she’d reached the age when ‘keeping up’ required consistent effort. Jane never bothered about staying ahead of the game, because Jane knew she was the game.

Scary. Everything was scary. Like the thought of a centralized police service directed by nervous politics. Merrily went across to the Hereford tourist information centre and picked up what she could on the Malverns before climbing the stone steps to the Deliverance office, where Sophie was putting the phone down.

‘Just came in to say that if there’s nobody I need to see, I think it might be best to go back to Wychehill. Get this over. Is that all right?’

‘Did Mr Bliss clarify things?’

‘Mr Bliss muddled things further, as Mr Bliss so loves to do.’

‘Merrily, three things … I resorted to the telephone, from which I learned that the Royal Oak used to be a favoured meeting place for rambling clubs because of its capacious car park and access to several footpaths. The Ramblers’ Association, needless to say, has lodged a complaint with the tourist authorities.’

‘It’s what they do. I don’t think I’m going to worry too much about the Royal Oak.’

‘I also checked with Worcester Deliverance. It appears that mysterious balls of light are not unknown in the Malverns. Usually connected with UFOs rather than anything psychic. Unexplained cyclists with lamps, however … that’s a new one.’

‘Oh, well. Thanks, Soph—’

‘And, thirdly, the Reverend Spicer rang. The public meeting in Wychehill planned for Wednesday … I’m sorry about this, Merrily.’

‘Called off? No, you wouldn’t be sorry about that, would you?’

‘Brought forward. To tomorrow evening.’

‘What?’

‘For reasons of discretion, according to Mr Spicer. They want to be sure there are no press people there. Or, indeed, employees of the local authorities or the tourist associations, who’ve been known to attend such meetings. He says it’s something that should be settled by local people … and you, of course.’

‘But I’ve got a christening in the afternoon!’

‘The part of the meeting relevant to you won’t start until eight-thirty.’

‘No, I mean, I still have people in Wychehill to see.’

Sophie sighed. ‘Sometimes I think you try too hard.’

‘You either do the job or you don’t. I’ll just have to go back tonight.’

‘Merrily…’ Sophie rocked back. ‘That’s ridiculous. You’ve been there twice already, you’ve been up since dawn … Have you even eaten?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Right,’ Sophie stood up. ‘I’ll take you.’

‘No, it’s—’

‘If you fall asleep at the wheel on the way back…’

‘I’ll ask Lol, OK? Give me a chance to see Jane before we go – I’m starting to feel like a part-time parent.’

Maybe it was what Bliss had suggested, about Jane and drugs. She rang Lol, and there was no answer.

11 Idyll Chipped

When Lol called back, Merrily was already in the car in the Bishop’s Palace courtyard. She switched off the engine. Lol was asking if she knew about Jane’s project.

Merrily sank back in her seat, twisting the rear-view mirror, smoothing out what could be a new line under her left eye.

Jane and project. Curious how sinister those words sounded together.

‘She said she was going to explain it all to you this morning,’ Lol said, ‘if you hadn’t had to dash off so early.’

‘If I hadn’t had to dash off so early, she’d have been at school, and she knows it.’ Merrily closed her eyes. ‘She’s never done that before. I don’t think.’

‘The exams are over…’

‘I don’t care, it’s a school day.’

‘Do you want to call in, if you get home earlyish?’

‘Thing is, I’m only coming home to change. I’ve got a job out near Malvern. For which I think I need to look like a minister of God.’

‘Oh. Well, she knows I’ll tell you. She just uses me as a filter. It’ll wait.’

‘No, it won’t,’ Merrily said. ‘I can tell it won’t.’ Bloody Jane. ‘Lol, I was wondering if you could come with me. Sophie wanted to drive … thinks I might fall asleep at the wheel. Actually, it’s a situation that might benefit from a second opinion, and I’m not sure Sophie’s would be the right one.’

‘I’m just a humble songwriter. Sure. Whatever.’

‘You undersell yourself. A humble songwriter who once did half a psychotherapy course. If you come over to the vicarage in, say, fifty-five minutes, I should be changed and ready to leave.’

Small silence. Through one of the Bishpal windows, she could see Gary, the Bishop’s West Highland terrier, standing on the back of a sofa waiting for the boss to come back from the cricket.

‘If I come round in, say, forty-five minutes,’ Lol said, ‘will you still be undressed?’

No time, of course, for that. Jane was home, anyway – quiet, obliging, and therefore suspicious. Sure, she’d get her own meal. No problem, you two get off to … wherever. Exhibiting no particular curiosity about what might be going down. Which meant that something was printed on her own agenda, in heavy type.

But worrying about Jane could eat up your life. And now, for the first time in many years, she was a problem shared … kind of. At least, Lol … well, at least they were officially an item at last, nothing clandestine any more.

On the road, Merrily driving the Volvo, he told her about Jane and Coleman’s Meadow. The ley line and the luxury executive homes. Something about all this seemed to bother him but, for once, Merrily couldn’t see a major problem.

‘Kid’s been involved in far worse things. I mean, I don’t like the idea of an ancient trackway to the top of Cole Hill being obliterated to accommodate luxury executive homes. We’ve had two new estates in eighteen months.’

‘Small starter homes would be OK?’ Lol said.

‘We need a few starter homes. I’m just not sure we need any more…’

‘Sedate, comfortable middle-class people?’

‘Let’s back away from that one for the moment. Whatever we need, there have to be better places to put them. OK, so Jane gets up a petition to the council. Fair enough. She’s seventeen. Next year she gets the vote.’

Lol polished the lenses of his brass-rimmed glasses on the bottom of his T-shirt.

‘Far be it from me, as a failed psychotherapist, to try to tell you about your daughter, but, like … do you think maybe it goes deeper? Bored with A levels, not lit-up by the idea of university, because everybody does that.’

‘You think she doesn’t want to leave home?’

‘Maybe she’s afraid to. Afraid that she’ll come back to find everything destroyed. Lost a lot, over the years. Her dad. Lucy…’

‘Mmm.’

Jane’s dad, her mother’s unfaithful husband. Dead in a car crash, but Jane had still been little then. When the formidable Lucy Devenish, the kid’s first real friend in Ledwardine, had been knocked off her moped and killed on the outskirts of the village, that was worse, an idyll badly chipped. Jane, town-raised, had bonded with the countryside very quickly, thanks to Lucy and her rural folklore and her – OK – possible paganism.

And it was in Lucy’s old shop, Ledwardine Lore, that Jane had been the first of them to encounter a damaged musician, trying to reassemble his life after a criminally unjust court conviction, a family breakdown, a bad time in a psychiatric hospital. So many daughters could barely tolerate their mothers’ boyfriends, but Jane had virtually engineered this relationship. Lol putting down a deposit on Lucy’s cottage in Church Street, just across from the vicarage … that was the final piece in Jane’s mosaic.

And Lucy Devenish was still a presence for all three of them.

Lucy’s primary raison d’être had been the defence of old Ledwardine against misguided incomers and the slashing scythe of crass development.

Uh-oh.

Merrily glanced at Lol, trying to look like a respectable companion for a vicar in a dark jacket over a dark T-shirt with no motif. Jane and Lol were, in their own way, also an item. Jane knew how to work him.

‘So the imminent destruction of Coleman’s Meadow and the ley line … you think she sees that as something that would’ve sent Lucy ballistic. What’s she going to do, do you think?’

‘She wanted to know who to complain to.’

‘Councillor Pierce?’

‘What else could I say? She’d only find out somewhere else.’

‘Well. I instinctively don’t like Lyndon Pierce much…’

‘But at this moment you could almost feel sorry for him, right?’

‘It’s going to be an experience for him, certainly.’

Merrily drove into Ledbury, with its oak-framed market hall, its clock and its sunny old bricks. Last town before the Malvern Hills, the eastern ramparts of Here-fordshire reflecting the Black Mountains of Wales in the west. Between these purple-shadowed walls, the county was a twilit, peripheral place.

Normally, she liked that. The out-of-timeness of it.

Bloody Jane.

The Malverns were so familiar, an eleven-mile ripple on the horizon, that it was easy to miss how strange they were. They were sudden hills, a surprise happening in an otherwise eventless landscape

Driving in from a different side tonight, Merrily watched the scenery acquiring scaled-down Alpine dimensions: sunlit, serrated ridge, inky valley. Eleven roller-coaster miles with a long history of recreation, ever since they’d been reserved as a hunting ground by the conquering Normans.

Never more famous, however, than in Victorian days when the healing waters of one-time holy wells had briefly been more sought-after than champagne and Great Malvern had become a fashionable resort.

The guidebook she’d bought in Hereford and checked out over tea explained how these hills had been given special protection, for one reason or another, throughout recorded history.

But it hadn’t stopped the quarrying.

‘Apparently, George Bernard Shaw remarked that so much stone was being taken away that the Malvern Hills were in danger of becoming the Malvern Flats.’

‘But they’ve stopped it now?’ Lol said.

‘Not that long ago.’ Merrily slowed, approaching a green-bearded cliff face. ‘But at least quarrying’s good for concealed car parks.’

A segment like a slice of layered cake had been cut out of the hillside, and someone had built a shambling stone house on raised ground at the apex. A house which, at some stage, had grown into a country pub. Lol inspected it with no discernible awe.

‘This is the gateway to hell?’

Maybe there had once been a tiered garden in front; now it was this huge parking area with walls of natural rock, partly curtained with conifers. Merrily pulled onto its edge, under the discoloured swinging sign on a pole in the entrance: an archaic-looking painting of a squat tree and Royal Oak in faded Gothic lettering. Below, another sign, plain white, pointing at the pub.

Inn Ya Face >>>>

Nine or ten vehicles on the car park but no people around. She wound her window down. No sound other than birdsong. No visible litter. No smell of moral cesspit.

‘If the gateway to hell was jammed with people burning, nobody would be tempted into sin,’ Lol said.

‘That a new song?’

‘Not yet.’

‘OK, let’s go and talk to people about a ghost on a bike.’

The Volvo jangled on the long incline.

It was half a steepish mile further on, towards the top of the hill. Coming in from the south-west, you could see how the community had been constructed on the ravages of quarrying, houses and bungalows forming alongside new forestry, on their separate levels.

More than half hidden, it was like the shadow of a village.

But tonight it was sprinkled with gold dust.

Both their windows were down as they drove in, and, on the cusp of evening, the warm air around Wychehill was glistening with the moist and luminous soundtrack of medieval heaven.

12 Nearness

A ribbon of road under hunched, conifered shoulders. Like Spicer had said, no evidence of community or enclosure: no shop, no pub, no kids on bikes, no dog-walkers. Only on the top of Herefordshire Beacon, maybe two miles away, could you see figures moving, like flies on a cow-pat.

At just after seven p.m. Merrily pulled into a long bay in front of the church behind five other cars.

The church was set well back from the road but the distance was reduced by its size. At the end of an aisle-like path from the bay, its porch door was closed, its squat tower had no window slits. It stared sightlessly towards the road and couldn’t see the lushness of the valley which opened up below it on the other side.

And yet this unpromising, sullen hulk – post-Victorian-Gothic, built of still-unmellowed stone blocks – was … exalted.

Merrily shut her car door as softly as she could.

‘It’s got to be a record … a CD.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Lol said.

He stood in the church entrance by the black sign with gold lettering: St Dunstan’s. Above it, a heavy lantern on a wrought-iron bracket, one of its glass panels shattered.

The voices, male and female, poured down like a slow fountain.

‘It’s … Gregorian chant?’ Lol said.

‘I don’t know. I mean, that’s…’

‘Something like that, maybe. It’s certainly Latin.’

‘But that’s … I know things aren’t as hard and fast these days … but this is an Anglican church.’

Lol shrugged.

‘You want to go in?’

‘Better deal with what we came for.’

Merrily unfolded the order-of-service for a funeral, on which Syd Spicer had written the names and addresses, beginning with Tim Loste, Caractacus Cottage. Down the road, past the Rectory.

‘He’s got to be conducting it, hasn’t he?’

‘Hell of a choir for a village this size,’ Lol said.

‘A village where, according to the Rector, people don’t even talk to each other much. So, like, they just sing? Why didn’t Spicer tell me Loste wouldn’t be available tonight?’

‘I don’t suppose he knew you were coming. How far away are the others?’

‘Chairman of the parish council has a farm about half a mile away. I was going to save him till last, as he apparently hasn’t yet claimed to have seen anything. The other’s a Mrs Cobham. Converted barn. Two minutes’ walk, according to Spicer. Call that ten for the likes of us.’

‘He was in the SAS?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Is it common for an ex-SAS man to go into the Church?’

‘Church welcomes hard men. Good for the image. Bit of balance.’

They walked through the cutting, past Hannah Bradley’s cottage. No sign of Hannah. Although there was nobody about, Merrily felt conspicuous and zipped up her thin black fleece over her dog collar. Now the road was curving away around a hill defined by ascending houses and bungalows, several of them hidden behind conifer walls.

‘How about for him?’ Lol said. ‘Not a bit tame?’

‘We have people in the C of E make the Taliban look like a tennis club.’ Merrily stopped, looked up the hill. ‘Do you think that’s it?’

The barn-conversion was set back from the lane, its bay filled with plate-glass panels, mirrors of gold in the early-evening light. Expensive. The new gravel driveway had been given a curving route to make it seem longer, maples planted in careful stockades either side of it. A white Mercedes 4×4 sat at the top, outside the oak front door.

‘This is the woman whose car apparently went out of control and hit a camper van.’

But, again, there was nobody in. Merrily felt that, even before Lol let the knocker fall twice against its steel plate, the clunks echoing inside the barn like footsteps in an empty ballroom. She stepped back.

‘Not my night, obviously.’

‘Maybe it’s the wrong house.’

‘So which other one couldn’t we miss?’

Lol knocked again.

‘Maybe they’re in the choir.’

‘A whole village of brilliant, classically trained singers?’

Merrily moved back towards the lane which, beyond the barn, became a dirt track.

‘It’s like someone we can’t see is laughing at us.’

Maybe Syd Spicer. Maybe the Rector of Wychehill was laughing at them. Laughing silently, lying in some ditch, covered with branches, his face streaked with dark mud, like in the old days.

He should be here, as back-up. The protocol was that the local priest came with you, the first time, didn’t just throw the addresses at you and leave you to get on with it.

Merrily went to the edge of the lane and looked down into a bucolic kaleidoscope: swirls of woodland and cider-apple orchards and maybe vineyards, around sheep fields which glowed like emerald and amber stained glass as the sun began its scenic dive into the Black Mountains forty miles away.

By the time they’d walked back towards the church, the chant had stopped.

‘Maybe the whole community turns out to listen.’ Lol walked into the entrance, along the gravel path bordered with yew trees, turning to look back at Merrily. ‘You’re allowed.’

‘I don’t know that I am, to be quite—’

‘Pardon me?’

A blur of movement. Merrily turned slowly. A woman had appeared out of the trees by the entrance. She wore a pale sleeveless dress so long that it completely covered her feet, and it seemed somehow as if she’d risen from the ground.

‘You’re looking for someone?’

‘Well, we—’

‘Is there a concert on?’

Lol had wandered back. The woman smiled at him.

‘Choir practice, is all.’

She had a loose, wide mouth and big, deep-sunk eyes that seemed swirlingly aglow.

‘You’re in the choir?’

‘I don’t sing, although I have an interest. I was taking some air during the break. I live in a cottage back there. Wyche Cottage? Like the Wyche in Wychehill, which means salt, only, the real-estate guy in Ledbury, when he told me the name on the phone, I thought it was witch, and I’m like … woooh.’

She shook her tumble of brown curls.

‘Disappointing, really,’ Lol said.

‘How so?’

‘That it just means salt.’

‘Yeah. I guess. I changed it, anyway. Starlight Cottage now. Look—’

She came forward, stumbling over the dusty hem of her dress, coming up very close to Lol and peering at him. Contact lenses, Merrily thought.

‘Pardon me,’ the woman said to Lol, ‘I don’t want to appear … but I think I know who you are?’

He took a pace back. Occasionally he was recognized, usually by someone who’d bought a Hazey Jane album nearly twenty years ago and was mildly pleased that he hadn’t killed himself like Nick Drake. He never relished it.

‘OK…’ The woman gazed hard at Lol. ‘Listen, I may have this totally wrong, but see, I’m not so stupid. I was expecting an old guy in a big hat with like a black bag, and it’s no business of mine, really, but you should know that some people in this place are just a little crazy.’

‘How so?’ Lol said.

‘Not so simple. Like, you’re talking about something, you know, sacred?’ She looked down and brushed a leaf from her dress. ‘I’m sorry. This is not my place. But there’s something here that must never be parted, you know what I’m saying? Like, you can walk out on the hills at twilight and you can sense his nearness. It’s a strange and awesome thing.’

‘Yes,’ Lol said. ‘I can imagine it would be.’

‘So, like, you know, I mean no disrespect here, but the whole idea of exorcizing this … wonderful, magical thing – from the Malvern Hills, of all places – that’s gotta be a bone of contention, right?’

This was the third time they’d stood outside a front door getting no response, but Merrily had heard the radio playing inside the house and she kept her finger on the bell.

It was still more than a minute before the door opened and Spicer stood there, unsmiling, in jeans and a black clerical shirt.

‘A word, Syd.’

He stared at her without expression, then looked at Lol. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, as if he’d been dealing with one of those household tasks he performed privately to prove he had no need of outside help.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

She’d pulled down the zip of her fleece to reveal the collar, show him she was kitted out this time.

Spicer said, ‘Who’s your friend?’

‘I realize local loyalty is a good thing,’ Merrily said, ‘and crucial for a parish priest, I accept that. But there’s also the question of loyalty between people who share a … a calling? So you give me half a story, set me up to appear in front of the entire parish—’

‘It won’t be the entire parish. It won’t even be half the parish. Who’s your friend?’ he asked again.

‘This is Lol Robinson. He’s standing in as witness, back-up, second opinion. All the roles normally filled by the particular parish priest who’s requested assistance. If the parish priest can be bothered.’

‘I’m sorry, Merrily, I just assumed you’d prefer to check things out on your own.’

‘No, you didn’t. You just didn’t want, for some reason, to reveal the alleged identity of the alleged presence.’

‘Look,’ Spicer said. ‘The people out there who wanted an exorcist called in, I thought it was down to them to explain exactly why. I just went through the motions. I told you I had reservations, but I didn’t think it was right to spell them out to you before you’d had a chance to check out the situation for yourself.’

‘Maybe you wanted me to come back this evening to hear the music, just to underline it a little?’

‘I didn’t know you’d be coming back at all before the meeting. That’s why I set it up. For God’s sake, Merrily—’

She turned away in frustration. The evening sun threw an unearthly light on Herefordshire Beacon so that it looked like a cake aflame on a hot-plate.

‘I mean … Elgar?’ She swung back to face him. ‘That Elgar?’

13 Another Sphere of Existence

Oh shit, surely not this one? Please don’t let it be this one.

The late sun was bleeding into a false horizon of cloud, an old tractor coughing and retching across a field somewhere.

Jane standing in Virgingate Lane, radiating dismay.

She’d looked up Councillor Pierce in the phone book. The address was given as Avalon, which had been kind of promising: anyone who’d named his house after the legendary land of apples in the west, where King Arthur had been laid to rest, must have some kind of a soul.

Yeah, well…

There obviously had been apple trees here, in the days when Ledwardine was almost entirely surrounded by productive orchards. In fact, you could see a few of their sad stumps in the shaven piece of former field through which a tarmac drive cut like a motorway intersection, all the way to the triple garage.

Half a dozen cars were parked along the drive, which was actually wider than Virgingate Lane itself, where all the cottages were old and bent and comfortably sunk into the verges.

The extensive dwelling at the top of the tarmac drive was built of naked, glistening bricks, the colour of a Barbie’s bum. It had a conservatory, a sun-lounge, three fake gaslamps.

Jane could hear music and faint laughter from the house.

Great.

The plan had been to maybe encounter Councillor Pierce in his garden, casually ask him about the Coleman’s Meadow project and then perhaps educate him a little on the subject of leys and natural harmonies. He couldn’t turn her away, could he? He was a politician. She’d be able to vote for him next time. Or not.

It was clear from all the cars, however, that Councillor Pierce was hosting a dinner party or something. Bollocks.

Stupid idea, anyway. Jane felt deeply self-conscious now, standing there in her white hoodie like some shameless stalker. Unlikely that she’d gone unobserved from inside.

As if in confirmation of this, security spotlamps came blasting on below the broad pink patio which surrounded the house like a display plinth. Jane saw the hulk of a plundered cider-press with a slate plaque attached to the stone wheel. The plaque said – inevitably – AVALON.

Maybe it was irony. Sod it, anyway. She turned away from the horror. Maybe she’d just write a letter of protest to the planning department, with a copy to the Hereford Times who wouldn’t print it. Sod them all.

‘Excuse me!’ A man behind her. ‘Excuse me … you looking for anyone in particular?’

Jane turned. Two guys in middle-aged leisureware – polo shirts, chinos, golfing shoes kind of kit – were strolling down the drive towards the nearest car, a gold Lexus. One of the guys beeped open the car doors and balanced a beer can on the roof.

Jane was starting to shake her head, walk away, when one of the pinkening clouds over Avalon reminded her, somehow, of the bird-of-prey profile of Lucy Devenish. She sighed.

‘You’re not … Councillor Pierce?’

The guy with the car keys grinned, opening one of the rear doors.

‘How far would it get me if I said I was?’

‘Excuse my friend, he’s an oaf,’ the second guy said. ‘Did you want to see Lyndon?’

‘Erm … Well, you know, not if he’s like, you know, busy.’

Both of them laughed. The guy with the keys pulled a black leather briefcase from the Lexus.

‘You think Lyndon will be too busy to see this lovely young thing, Jeff?’

‘Lyndon is a man always mindful of his civic duties,’ the other guy said. ‘Follow us, if you like.’

‘No, really,’ Jane said, ‘it’s not urgent or anything. I can—’

‘No, no, you can at least come and have a drink. You’ll be quite safe. My colleague’s in Social Services.’

They laughed. The cloud formation that had looked for a moment like Lucy Devenish had broken up.

It wasn’t exactly a pool party or a barbecue. That is, there was a pool and a barbecue behind the house, but neither was in use. However, one of those extraterrestrial-looking patio heaters was working, and seven people – four men, three women – were spread over a couple of hardwood tables, with drinks. Papers on the table seemed to be architect’s plans.

‘So what would you expect of a new community centre, Jane?’ Lyndon Pierce said.

He handed her a glass of white wine. He didn’t seem to recognize her, which was probably a good thing. He’d asked her name, and she’d just said Jane and left it at that.

New community centre?

‘So, like, what’s wrong with the old community centre?’

‘That’s precisely what’s wrong with it.’ Lyndon grinned. ‘It’s old.’

Lyndon was quite a lot less old than she’d imagined. Maybe thirty. Gelled black hair and a plump mouth. Tracksuit bottoms and a Hawaiian shirt open over a red T-shirt. Not too gross yet, but he probably would be in a couple of years.

‘Chance of a National Lottery grant, you see, Jane,’ one of the chino guys said. ‘We’ll be holding a public meeting to let the people of Ledwardine have their say. We’re drawing up a list of options for them.’

‘What if the people of Ledwardine don’t want a new community centre?’ Jane said.

Lyndon Pierce looked at her like he didn’t understand the question. Beyond the swimming pool, the view was across a couple of darkening fields towards Ledwardine square. Lights were coming on in the Black Swan, the church steeple fading back into the evening sky like another sphere of existence.

‘I’m sorry,’ Lyndon said. ‘Cross purposes, I think. We were just all having an informal chat about the new community centre, look, but you wanted to talk about … ?’

‘Coleman’s Meadow,’ Jane said.

‘Oh. Right. Actually, Jeff’s in Planning, he might be able to help you on that one.’

Jeff said doubtfully, ‘Well, I’m afraid they’ll probably be fairly pricey, if you’re…’

Jane could tell he was trying to work out if she was old enough to be getting married or setting up home with someone. It was almost flattering. She took a sip of wine, thinking hard. She’d just stumbled, unprepared, into what seemed to be an out-of-hours gathering of top council people. When would she get another chance like this? Probably never.

OK.

‘I think you’ve … got this wrong…’ Trying to keep her voice steady. ‘I wouldn’t live in Coleman’s Meadow, if the alternative was, like, a cardboard box in Jim Prosser’s shop doorway.’

Eyebrows went up. A thin woman of about Mum’s age gave Jane a hard look.

‘Because, like, Coleman’s Meadow is a very important ancient site which should be protected,’ Jane said. ‘I’d have thought somebody might’ve noticed that.’

Nobody was smiling much now.

‘I’m sorry, Jane,’ Jeff said. ‘This particular development would be what we would call acceptable infill. We’re very pleased that site’s become available. So I don’t think any of us quite understands what you’re getting at there.’

‘Right.’ Jane swallowed more wine. ‘I can draw you a proper plan if you want but, basically, Coleman’s Meadow is the key point on an ancient alignment from the top of Cole Hill, through a burial mound and Ledwardine Church and then on to, like, a couple of other sites. Coleman’s Meadow is really important because the field gates are perfectly sited on the alignment and because the old straight track actually exists there … like, you can see it, and…’

She was going to say feel it. Decided to leave that aspect alone at this stage.

Lyndon Pierce blinked. Jeff and another guy looked at each other.

‘So … so, what I’m saying, if you have new houses – totally unnecessary new houses – built on Coleman’s Meadow it would completely obliterate the most perfect, like one of the clearest examples of … of a…’

‘Ley line?’

An older guy, wearing a cream sports jacket, half-glasses and a half smile.

‘Ley,’ Jane said.

The older guy nodded. ‘I wondered if that was what you were talking about.’ He looked relieved.

‘So…’ Lyndon Pierce lowered the wine bottle to the flags at his feet ‘… you know what she’s on about, Cliff?’

‘I’m sure you must’ve heard of ley lines, Lyndon.’

‘I’ve heard of them, yeah—’

‘Periodically, someone revives the idea that prehistoric stones and burial sites were arranged, for some mystical purpose, in straight lines, along which old churches were also built. If you ask the County Archaeologist, he’ll tell you it’s a lot of nonsense. But, like many ideas discredited by the archaeological establishment, it’s become a cult belief among … well, usually old hippies or New Age cranks.’

‘So it’s like, flying saucers and that sort of stuff?’ Lyndon Pierce asked.

‘Exactly,’ the older guy said.

‘So nothing to … ?’

‘No, no.’ The older guy shook his head, smiling faintly. ‘Not at all.’

Jane thought of Alfred Watkins, reserved, bearded, magisterial, a pillar of the Hereford community but with an open, questing mind. Everything she’d been taught suggested that society in the early part of the twentieth century had been nowhere near as liberal and adventurous as today’s.

Yeah? Well, no wonder there was no statue of Alfred Watkins in High Town, with bastards like this running the county.

‘How can you…’ She couldn’t get her breath for a moment. ‘How can you talk like that? How can you, like, just rubbish something that throws a whole new light on the countryside … that makes it all light up? Especially in Herefordshire, where Alfred Watkins was, like, the first person in the world to … to…’

‘Ah … Watkins, yes.’ Cliff smiled at her, cool with this now. ‘Charming old chap, by all accounts. Typically English eccentric, very entertaining, totally misguided.’

‘That’s a typical Establishment viewpoint!’

‘Oh dear,’ Cliff said. ‘I’m terribly sorry, but I rather suppose that’s what we are.’

‘So, thank you for coming, Jane,’ Lyndon Pierce said. ‘But I’m afraid a fantasy conjured up by some old, dead eccentric guy is really not going to cut much ice today. I was elected, as I’m sure your parents will tell you, on an expansionist ticket. Nowadays, rural communities grow or die, and I want to see Ledwardine getting more shops, restaurants, leisure facilities … and far more housing. We could have a thriving little town here.’

‘But it’s not a t—’

Jane stared at Pierce, who seemed to be bloating before her eyes into something obscene.

‘Jane…’

It was the woman who’d given her the hard look. Short curly hair, dark suit. Possibly seen her somewhere before, but not here.

‘Jane, is this just a personal issue for you?’ the woman said.

‘Well, I’m also doing a project for school. On the interpretation of landscape mysteries?’

‘Ah. How old are you?’

‘Seventeen.’

Somebody started to laugh.

‘And which school do you go to?’ the woman asked.

‘Moorfield High?’

‘Robert Morrell,’ the woman murmured to Cliff. ‘Jane, does Mr Morrell know you’re here?’

‘Look … sorry … what’s it got to do with him?’

‘Quite a lot, I should have thought, as he’s the head of Moorfield High.’

‘Well, he doesn’t live here, does he?’ Jane felt herself going red. ‘Like, I care about this place. I don’t want to see it ruined. I don’t want to see the ancient pattern all smashed for the sake of a bunch of crap, bourgeois piles of pink brick like … like this. I mean, sod your new community centre, you should be having a public meeting about the annihilation of Coleman’s Meadow, don’t you think?’

‘I really don’t think we should be arguing about a plan that’s not yet come before the council,’ the woman said. ‘Certainly not with a schoolgirl.’

‘But if nobody says anything, it’ll just get quietly pushed through, won’t it, by people who don’t give a—’

‘I should be very careful what you say, if I were you,’ the woman said coldly.

‘Particularly to the vice-chair of the Education Committee,’ Cliff said.

A rock landed in Jane’s gut. This was, of course, the woman who’d been sitting next to Morrell on stage at the prizegiving ceremony.

Jane looked down at her wineglass; it was empty.

‘Well, I can see I’m not going to get anywhere with you guys. I think I need to get home to…’

She backed away to the nearest corner of the house called Avalon and then looked at each of them in turn.

‘… Work out how best to shaft you,’ Jane said.

And turned and ran through the summer-scented dusk, past the crooked, sunken, black and white cottages of Virgingate Lane.

14 A Dim and Bleary Light

Spicer led Merrily and Lol into his spartan kitchen, offered them seats at his table but no tea. The sun had dropped into a bank of cloud, and the conifers at the end of the garden were turning black.

Spicer switched off the radio.

‘I suppose it’s like people seeing Shakespeare’s ghost in Stratford-on-Avon.’

He joined them at the table but didn’t put a light on.

‘Or Wordsworth in Grasmere,’ Merrily said. ‘Brontës in Howarth. Yes, I do get the picture.’

Recalling once looking up a number under E in the Hereford phone book and noticing Elgar Carpets and Interiors, Elgar Coaches, the Elgar Coffee Shop, Elgar Fine Art … like that for about half a page.

In all these establishments, you’d be shelling out twenty-pound notes with an engraved portrait on the back of a man with neat grey hair, a generous moustache, faraway eyes.

‘See, in comparison,’ Spicer said, ‘Wordsworth and Shakespeare are remote figures. Elgar’s been dead barely seventy years. It’s like he still lives around here, with everything he’s come to represent. Go to the Elgar museum at Broadheath, they say you can see his betting slips.’

He had his back to the window bay, blocking more light from the room, which had three doors, all shut. One thing was sure: you’d never see Syd Spicer’s betting slips. Merrily wondered if visitors were confined to the stripped-down kitchen so they wouldn’t clock his books or his CD collection or pictures of his kids.

‘I should’ve realized. The soundtrack of the Malverns. The obvious spirit of the place.’

‘Maybe more obvious than you know,’ Spicer said. ‘Joseph Longworth, the quarry boss who built the church, as well as being a born-again Christian or however they put it in those days, was an Elgar fanatic. The church was built that size to accommodate an orchestra and choir able to perform the great man’s works. Elgar’s said to have attended the dedication.’

‘It’s all coming out, isn’t it?’

‘If Longworth could’ve called it St Edward’s he would have.’

‘But Elgar was a Catholic, wasn’t he?’

‘Yeah, he was,’ Spicer said, ‘and he wrote extensively for the Catholic Mass, as you … presumably heard. But, of course, his music was played in Anglican cathedrals, and cathedral sound was what Longworth was paying for.’

‘Sounds like he was getting it.’

‘Not for long. They held a few concerts here, but Longworth died and then Elgar died. And nothing much happened until Tim Loste arrived. Who thinks Elgar’s God. So this is becoming Elgar city again after many years. I’m sorry, maybe I should’ve told you.’

‘And should I have heard of Tim Loste in a wider context?’

‘Nah. Used to be a music teacher at Malvern College, now he’s a private tutor. Got an amateur choir drawn from miles around. At least, it started amateur; they’re making a bit of money now. From my point of view, the parish gets its cut, and if most of the music’s heavily Catholic, well…’

‘Fills the church.’

‘Yeah. Situation now is, we’ve a whole bunch of people in Wychehill and down the valley who’ve moved here solely because this is Elgar country. Listen to some of them, you start picking up this maudlin kind of patriotism. “Land of Hope and Glory.” Don’t you hate that song?’

‘Apparently, Elgar hated it, too,’ Lol said. ‘But then, he didn’t write the words.’

Merrily glanced at him. She didn’t know he knew any more about Elgar than she did, which, frankly, was not much.

‘Let’s deal with the bottom line, Syd. Who’s saying the supposed presence is Elgar?’

‘Out loud, nobody. It’s one of those situations where an idea develops. Can I tell you why I’m not happy about it?’

‘Please.’

‘Well, let me tell you about Tim. Good conductor, great teacher, they say … but would like to be a great composer and isn’t. Some part of him is deeply frustrated. He’s prone to depression. So this particular night he goes off the road, hits a telegraph pole. Nobody else involved, no injury, no need for police. Which was just as well, because Tim was pissed.’

‘Oh.’

‘Happened just across from the church. I heard the crash. I go over, help him out of the wreckage – this is about half-nine at night, month or so ago, getting dark. Bring him back here, administer the black coffee. He’s shaking all over. I was going down to Ledbury, he says, to buy a light bulb for my desk lamp. Trying to write, bulb blew. Going down to Ledbury for a light bulb – that tells you the state he was in. I’d’ve given him a bloody bulb, for God’s sake.’

‘Is he often … ?’

‘Drunk and incapable? Now and then. Couple of us had to go down the Oak one night, get him away from the bouncers. He’d broken a window. I didn’t tell you about the Oak, did I?’

‘I know about it.’

‘Naturally, Tim really hates the Royal Oak. A disruptive force sent to destroy his life’s work. Lost it completely one night when the wind changed and all this rap music … it kind of rises up and bounces off the hill. Anyway, that’s by the by: this crash was on a week night, and the Oak was quiet. Tim reckoned he’d just pulled out of his drive when he saw what he described as a dim and bleary light. When it got closer, he could see it was a bicycle lamp. He said.’

‘But he was drunk.’

‘Very. Anyway, the light’s some distance away at first. And then he said it was like he must’ve blacked out for about half a second – which doesn’t surprise me – and the next thing the cyclist is coming straight at him. He says he can make out what seems to be a high-buttoned jacket and a hat. And a big, dark slice across the face.’

‘Moustache.’

‘That’s the inference. And the eyes are white, according to Tim, like the eyes in a photo negative. Tim swerves, goes into the pole.’

Spicer fell silent. In the fading light, he was very still, hadn’t moved since sitting down, didn’t seem to need to rearrange himself like most people, to find a comfortable position.

‘But how did he know it was Elgar?’ Lol said.

‘Mr Robinson, he’s got pictures of Elgar all over his walls, Elgar music seeping through the brickwork. Tim sees Elgar every-bloody-where. He’s … I like the guy, most people like him, but nobody’s gonna deny he’s well off his trolley. Planted an oak tree in his front garden. Have you seen the size of his front garden?’

‘And what did you do?’ Merrily said.

‘Sat him where you’re sitting now, told him to stay there. Rang a mate, runs a bodywork garage the other side of Colwall. Got him to bring his truck and get Tim’s car away before the police got word. If he’d lost his licence I think he’d have gone into a depression he might not have come out of easily. I said, Go home, get some sleep, Tim, and don’t even think of telling anybody what you just told me. As if.’

Spicer snorted.

‘He did tell people?’ Merrily said.

‘He told Winnie Sparke. That was enough. The American lady? Winnie is Tim’s … protector. Nurtures his sensitive talents, knows about his problems. Find out about you very quickly, Americans, because they just ask. You have an alcohol problem, Tim? I have herbs for that.’

‘So it was Winnie Sparke who spread it around?’

‘Couldn’t’ve timed it better. There’s a retired geezer, Leonard Holliday. Been here about two years. Leonard’s chairman and secretary of WRAG – the Wychehill Residents’ Action Group. Committed to getting rid of Inn Ya Face and restoring the Royal Oak to the gentle hostelry where Elgar himself … it’s said that Elgar used to drop in for a pint of cider when he was staying at his summer cottage over at Birchwood. So, anyway, there was a meeting of Holliday’s action group to appoint a deputation to lobby the council. Somebody says what a pity we don’t have a celebrity living here, like some of the villages have. Holliday says, pity we don’t have someone like Sir Edward here any more. And Winnie says, You’re sure we don’t … ?’

‘Oh dear.’

Merrily closed her eyes, suddenly quite deflated.

It all made sense. A gift for a protest group, the idea of England’s greatest serious composer rising up from the grave against Raji Khan and his filthy jungle music.

‘When was this, Syd?’

‘The meeting was about ten days ago. Winnie Sparke says it just slipped out, but it couldn’t’ve worked better if she’d timed it. Sir Edward Elgar riding into battle on Mr Phoebus?’

‘Who?’

‘Elgar called his bike Mr Phoebus. Name of a Roman sun god.’

‘What happened then?’

‘I think, to be honest, Holliday was dithering a bit. On the one hand, it would get in all the papers, attract massive publicity to their cause. On the other – apologies, Merrily, but who really believes ghost stories? It could easily be the wrong kind of publicity. But then there was another accident.’

‘Mrs Cobham?’

‘Stella. Stella and Paul. Famous for their very loud rows. Stella’s little BMW roaring down the middle of the road after some fracas, practically spitting flames. Cyclist coming down the middle of the road. Stella swerves. Family of German tourists in a mobile home looking for their campsite. Bam.’

‘Anybody hurt?’

‘Bit of whiplash for Stella. And shock. Says she’d never believed in anything like that, until … I don’t think you’ll get any change out of her. Doesn’t like talking about it any more. Doesn’t want to get a reputation as … you know … a bit of a Winnie Sparke. Actually, Winnie’s much more intelligent.’

‘You don’t have many illusions about your flock, do you, Syd?’

‘I’m supposed to? I thought it was our job to lead them to God. Merrily, there is no flock. This is not a village, it’s a bunch of disconnected houses jammed into rock crevices.’

‘So what about you?’ Merrily said. ‘What would you like to happen?’

‘I’d like people to be sensible. I’d like Donald Walford to stop worrying about his daughter, Joyce Aird to get her Polo out of the garage again instead of having all her groceries delivered. Sounds insane, doesn’t it?’

‘Not in an isolated community. I suppose a lot now depends on whether the driver of the Land Rover is claiming to have seen anything immediately prior to a crash that makes the other three look trivial.’

‘Yeah.’ Spicer nodded slowly. ‘It does, doesn’t it?’

‘Has he said anything yet?’

‘Not to me. Not yet. But he’s chairman of the parish council. Which means he’ll be chairing tomorrow’s meeting. You got the message about that?’

‘It’s why I came back tonight. Do you think I should go and see Mr Devereaux now?’

‘Whatever he’s decided, you won’t change his mind.’

‘I don’t want to change his mind.’

‘Merrily.’ Spicer stood up. ‘With respect, if you’ve spoken to Joyce, I think you’ve done enough. She’s the one wants an exorcism of some kind. What we’ve done, by getting you in, is brought it all to a head. Wychehill’s split three ways: the ones who don’t believe any of it, the ones who want whatever it is exorcised because they’re afraid of what will happen next and … the Elgar fans.’

Merrily thought about the American woman, Winnie Sparke. There’s something there that must never be parted, you know what I’m saying? Like, you can walk out on the hills at twilight and you can sense his nearness. It’s a strange and awesome thing.

Sensing his nearness.

Like Hannah Bradley who, quite reasonably, didn’t want it put around that she’d been been touched up, from the other side of the grave, by England’s most distinguished composer.

Consider the implications of this situation. Try not to panic.

15 Only Me

‘Why don’t I ever listen?’ Merrily was driving too fast down the hill towards Ledbury, as if the Malverns were ramming the Volvo from behind. ‘Jesus, she might be a touch loopy, this Winnie Sparke, but she cut to the essence of it: am I going to be the mad priest who stands at the roadside and publicly prays for the soul of a musical genius, a national icon, a man with his face on twenty-pound notes, to be at peace and stop causing fatal bloody road accidents? Am I going to be the person who – for heaven’s sake – exorcizes Elgar?’

‘Just … slow down. Please?’

Lol thought she looked tiny and vulnerable, at the wheel of a car that was too big for her and grated out its age on every bend. She’d refused to let him drive. He held on to the sides of his seat.

‘There’ll be a way out. Spicer doesn’t want that.’

‘No, Laurence,’ Merrily said, ‘What he doesn’t want is to have to do it himself.’

And she was probably right. One thing you learned, being close to a vicar, was that other vicars could be scheming bastards.

‘Whatever happens, he’s going to want to keep it discreet. They’re very publicity-shy, the ex-SAS. And that’s likely to be the main reason he’s switched the meeting from Wednesday night to tomorrow. He doesn’t want TV crews from America.’

A single light up ahead was dim and bleary. Merrily braked.

‘If it gets out,’ Lol said.

‘You don’t really think … ?’

‘Big figure, Elgar, worldwide.’

They passed the vintage motor-scooter. It was on the correct side of the road. Merrily drove slowly in silence for a while. A lorry overtook the Volvo. Lol caught her glance.

‘We’ve never discussed this, Lol, but I got the feeling in there that you knew rather more about Elgar than I did.’

‘Depends how much you know.’

‘Well … bugger-all, really. That’s what makes this so much worse.’

Jane stumbled, panting, into the cobbled market square with its hanging aroma of apple-wood smoke from the fire the Black Swan kept lit for the tourists on all but the warmest summer nights.

She looked around. Nobody about. No lights in the vicarage. No lights in Lol’s cottage, which used to be Lucy’s. Maybe he and Mum had locked the dog collar in the glove compartment and stopped to do it on the back seat in a lay-by.

Jane grinned. God, what was she turning into?

Whatever, at least those guys from the council hadn’t found out her full name. All she had to do was keep clear of Lyndon Pierce for a while and she could ride this out.

Which of course would be the coward’s way out.

It was about 10.15 p.m., the deep red veins of evening yielding to the cooling blue of early night. Jane moved between the lumpen 4x4s of the Black Swan’s clientele and slipped under the eaves of the oak-pillared market hall.

Thinking about the winter after Lucy died, when she’d seriously embraced some kind of goddess-worship, lying about her age to join this women’s esoteric group, The Pod, in Hereford. Wondering now why she’d more or less abandoned paganism which, on nights like this, seemed a kind of healthy spiritual response to nature and the environment.

A better relationship developing between her and Mum probably had something to do with it. Mum becoming more liberal as she became more secure in her own job. And then there was Eirion. Meeting Eirion, falling in … love, probably.

Which was looking like a dead end.

Jane moved out of the shadow of the market hall and across the cobbled square, walking towards the church until the top of Cole Hill came into view, smoky and seductive in the dusk. The hill of the shamans.

Eirion. She badly wanted to see him, but it was pointless. Within three months he’d be at university. Emma Rees at school – not a particular mate, but you had to feel sorry for her – had been engaged to some bloke, and he’d gone to college in Gloucester (that close) and within about a month it was Dear Emma … a bloody text message!

Jane didn’t do texting any more. Texting was for kids and adults with emotional dyslexia.

She took out her mobile, switched it on and watched it lighting up. Brought up the Abergavenny number from the phone book. This would be a small test, right?

Jane drew in a long, ragged breath and pressed the little green-phone sign, listening to it ringing. Decided no and was about to hit the little red-phone button when…

‘Jane Watkins.’ Eirion said in her ear. ‘I know the name from somewhere. Hang on … Yes! Didn’t we used to go out together at one time?’

Eirion’s phone had, of course, flashed up the caller’s number. So good to hear his stupid Welsh voice. Actually, not good at all.

‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry I haven’t rung. It’s been … it’s like…’

‘Thought I was being phased out, I did.’ Eirion exaggerating the accent. ‘In view of my imminent departure to some distant seat of learning. Strange how we become paranoid, isn’t it?’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Would’ve slashed my wrists in the bath,’ Eirion said, ‘except I’ve only got an electric razor.’

‘You could always have plugged it in, dropped it in the bath and electrocuted yourself. Lateral thinking, Irene.’ Jane smiling, in spite of it all. ‘Look, what would it cost to set up a website?’

‘Shit,’ Eirion said. ‘Any thoughts of you still wanting me for my body…’

‘It was never about your body, fatso.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Anyway, how soon could you organize it?’ Jane said.

Feeling that sense of what have I got to lose? urgency. Thinking of the council pygmies trashing the reputation of the great Alfred Watkins: lot of nonsense … New Age cranks…

Jane Watkins standing on the market square in ancient Ledwardine feeling the lines of energy, the ancestral spirit, glowing and pulsing all around her, rippling through her in the numinous dusk.

‘It was when Simon St John was laying down the cello parts for Alien,’ Lol said, ‘and I said I’d like something pastoral but moody. So Simon starts playing this lovely, sorrowful tune. And there it was. Hills … real hills. Texture. Dull day. Low cloud. And some diffuse, underlying emotion. Elgar’s Cello Concerto.’

‘Wow,’ Merrily said.

No particular reason for Lol not to know about Elgar. His own dead muse, Nick Drake, had, after all, been inspired by the likes of Delius and Ravel.

But Elgar had always seemed so Establishment. Hadn’t he been made Master of the King’s Musick? Hadn’t he composed all these marches and patriotic anthems? Hadn’t he written Pomp and Circumstance, whose very title…

‘Misunderstood,’ Lol said. ‘Most of his life people were getting him wrong. Even his appearance … Looked like an army officer. Or a country squire. Misleading.’

‘You mean you like Elgar?’

‘Son of a piano tuner with a shop in Worcester. Self-taught. Lived for nine years in Hereford where he employed his daughter’s white rabbit as a consultant because his wife wouldn’t let him have a dog. Kept trying to invent things. Had a home laboratory. Seems to have blown it up, once. What’s not to like?’

Merrily drove a little faster. You slept with someone – albeit rarely for a whole night – and you thought you knew everything about him.

‘And even when he was famous,’ Lol said, ‘he was often mentally, emotionally and spiritually … totally messed up.’

She glanced at him, sitting there with his hands on his knees, watching the dark, burnished landscape. How much common ground was there in the creative landscapes of classical composers and guys who cobbled together, albeit sometimes brilliantly, four-minute songs on their guitars?

‘He smoke?’

Thinking about Hannah and the strong tobacco.

‘Lifelong,’ Lol said.

‘What about women? Did he … like women?’

‘A lot. His wife was nine years older and a lot higher up the social scale than him. Her dad was a general or something. She helped him and encouraged him. It seems to have been a good marriage.’

‘But?’

Some people suggest he had affairs with younger women. It’s more likely to have been just … crushes.’

‘Where’d you learn all this?’

‘Couple of biographies.’

‘It’s just … you’ve just never mentioned him. You’ve never once mentioned Elgar.’

‘Well, you don’t, do you?’ Lol said. ‘He’s just too … too there. Part of the tourist trail. Every few miles, another sign saying Elgar Route. Nobody notices any more. He’s official. He’s a thousand people waving Union Jacks at the last night of the Proms. Which is why it’s so interesting how ambivalent he was about all that.’

Lol looked out of the side window towards a round hop kiln spiking the sunset like the tower of a Disneyland castle.

‘In fact, he was a romantic, a dreamer. And the landscape was everything. This landscape. When he was dying, he—’

He broke off, pretending to correct a twist in his seat belt, Merrily slipping him a glance.

‘Lol?’

‘Sorry?’

‘When he was dying what?’

‘Bit of whimsy, that’s all. Maybe not a good time.’

Merrily sighed.

‘OK,’ Lol said. ‘He’s lying there. He knows this is it. Coming up to the big moment he famously orchestrated in The Dream of Gerontius.’

‘That’s the one about the guy who’s dying and what happens afterwards? I’m sorry, I ought to know. I feel so…’

‘Heavenly choirs, conversations with angels, stodgy theology, heavy-duty dark night of the soul.’

‘Right.’

‘Anyway, inches from death, Elgar – I suspect – is trying hard not to think about the implications of all that. And Gerontius goes on for ever, while the Cello Concerto comes in at less than half an hour.’

‘Your kind of music.’

‘Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was checking out Elgar—’

‘No, you’ve every right— Just … carry on.’

‘So there’s a friend at the bedside. And Elgar beckons him over and feebly whistles the main theme from the Cello Concerto.’

Lol began to whistle softly, this rolling tune that rose and fell and rose and then fell steeply … and the road swooped down among long fields and hop yards under a sheet-metal sky warmed by bars of electric crimson.

‘This isn’t going to be a joke, is it?’ Merrily said.

‘No, but it has a punchline. Elgar says to the guy, “If ever you’re walking on the Malvern Hills and hear that, don’t be frightened … it’s only me.”’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Only me, huh?’

‘For what it’s worth,’ Lol said, ‘he didn’t mention the bike.’

16 Animation

Just when you very much needed to talk to your daughter…

MUM. EIRION’S COMING THROUGH EARLY. WILL PICK ME UP. WE NEEDED TO TALK. E. WILL GIVE ME LIFT TO SCHOOL. SEE U TONITE. LOVE, J.

Seven-thirty, Merrily had come stumbling downstairs in her towelling robe and the note was on the kitchen table, suspiciously close to where she’d left her own message yesterday for Jane.

Eirion and Jane needed to talk? We need to talk. Do you want to talk about this? What an ominous cliché talk had become, thanks to TV soaps. It meant cracks, it meant falling apart.

Not that Merrily hadn’t been conscious of a reduced intensity in the Jane/Eirion department. Not so long ago, one of them would phone every night, maybe in the morning, too – on the landline from home, Jane having gone off mobiles because they fried your brain and texting was for little kids.

That was something else: of late, Jane had become kind of Luddite about certain aspects of modern life. A year before leaving school, feeling threatened by change and destruction – was Lol right about that?

And the biggest change was the one affecting her relationship with Eirion – a year ahead of her and about to become a student. Big gap between a university student and a schoolkid. The gap between a child and an adult.

Nearly a year ago, Eirion had been sitting at this very kitchen table, on a summer morning like this, humbly confessing to Merrily that he and her daughter had had sex the night before. Both of them virgins. It had been almost touching.

Merrily put the kettle on, made some toast. Hard not to like Eirion, but liking your daughter’s boyfriend was a sure sign, everybody said, that it wouldn’t last. In an ideal world, Jane would have met Eirion in a few years’ time, when she’d been around a little. But society wasn’t programmed to construct happy endings. Relationships were assembled like furniture kits, and everybody knew how long they lasted.

The sun was swelling in the weepy mist over Cole Hill, evaporating the dew on the meadow. The mystical ley recharging. But Jane was stepping off it, moving safely out of shot.

‘Oh, come on, Jane!’

Eirion lowering the digital camera. A Nikon, naturally. He’d shot the view from the top of Cole Hill and the low mound on the way to the church, the hummock that Jane was convinced was an unexcavated Bronze Age round barrow. And then they’d walked another half-mile and crossed a couple of fields to find the prehistoric standing stone, half-hidden by a hedge and only three feet high but that was as good as you got in this part of the county. Fair play, he’d taken pictures of them all and he hadn’t moaned. Until now.

‘No.’ Jane flung an arm across her face. ‘For the last time, this is not about me, it’s about—’

‘Yeah, yeah, the balance and harmony of the village and the perpetuation of the legacy of the greatest man ever to come out of Hereford. But I have to tell you, Jane – speaking as a person only a few short years away from a glittering career in the media – that a shot of you, with your firm young breasts straining that flimsy summer-weight school blouse, will be worth at least a thousand extra hits.’

‘You disgust me, Lewis.’

Jane stepped behind a beech tree beside the bottom gate. A mature beech tree, full of fresh, light green life. One of several that would soon be slaughtered in the course of an efficient chainsaw massacre to accommodate twenty-four luxury executive homes.

Eirion tramped towards the tree, along the ley. Stocky, dependable Irene, his Cathedral-school jacket undone, the strap of his camera bag sliding down his arm.

‘Jane, listen, I’m serious. A view means nothing, basically. Just a field with a church steeple in the background? It needs a figure to suggest the line of sight. I’m not kidding. We have to persuade the various earth-mysteries organizations to run this on their sites.’

Eirion had reasoned that, if it was speed she was after, a website was probably not the answer at this stage. What they needed – a whole lot cheaper – was an initial explanatory document which could be emailed to interested parties and influential on-line journals.

Made sense. On that basis, if he shot the pictures this morning, he could have it laid out by late tonight, email her a copy for approval and by this time tomorrow they’d be up and running: the full horror of Coleman’s Meadow disclosed to the world before the weekend. Scores of people – possibly hundreds of people – lodging complaints with Hereford Council. Hundreds of New Age cranks and old hippies telling them exactly where they could put their acceptable infill.

Eirion stood watching her, keeping his distance.

‘What?’ Jane said

‘You clenched your fists. You looked positively homicidal. What have I said now?’

‘Irene, it’s not—’

Jane shook herself. Oh hell. To fit in this shoot, he must’ve been up at five, driving over from Abergavenny about ninety minutes earlier than usual. Face it: how many other guys would do that for you? She felt totally messed up again, her emotions all over the place, hormones in flood. For a moment she felt she just wanted to take him into a corner of the still-dewy meadow and…

… What would it be like making love on a ley? What kind of extra buzz would that produce?

What it would produce would be a golden memory.

‘Jane, are you all right? I mean you’re not ill … ?’

‘Sure. I mean, I’m fine.’

Jane clasped her hands together, driving back the tears. It was no use, she had a battle to fight, against slimy Lyndon Pierce and the chino guys and lofty, patronizing Cliff and the thin woman from Education. The mindless, philistine Establishment.

She sniffed and stepped out from behind the tree and walked back on to the ley, her head lowered.

‘How do you want me to stand?’

‘You’re perfect the way you are.’ Eirion smiled his glowingly honest, unstaged Eirion smile. ‘Just don’t look at me.’

Sophie displaying emotion was a rare phenomenon. When it happened it tended to be minimal: slender smiles, never a belly laugh. Disapproval, rather than…

‘Merrily, that is quite disgusting. It dishonours him.’

Sophie was looking out of the gatehouse window, towards the Cathedral green. There might even have been tears in her eyes.

‘It dishonours all of us.’

It was like you’d vandalized a grave. Spray-painted the headstone, trampled the flowers.

‘He lived in this city for nine years, at the height of his fame. Even after he’d left, he’d come back for the Three Choirs Festival, when it was held here … as it is this year.’

Sophie swung round, her soft white hair close to disarrangement.

‘Do you really want to besmirch that, Merrily?’

‘Me?’

‘I’m sorry, but this is giving credibility to something very sordid.’

She meant the road accidents. Merrily hadn’t even mentioned Hannah Bradley. Just as well, really.

‘Involving the Church in a campaign which might be laudable in itself but is extremely questionable in its execution is … I realize it’s not your fault, but you can stop it going any further.’

‘I didn’t expect you to be quite so … protective?’

‘I’m a former Cathedral chorister, I’m proud of my county’s link with Elgar. His homes at Birchwood and then here in the city. His many connections and friendships at the Cathedral—’

‘I know.’

Embarrassed by her ignorance, Merrily had picked up a slim guide to Elgar’s Herefordshire, skimming through it before Sophie came in. It was a start.

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Sophie said. ‘May one ask?’

‘Well, with your help, as an Elgar enthusiast and a Cathedral chorister for … how many years … ?’

‘Fourteen.’

‘… I want to look at it sensibly. Because whatever your misgivings about the idea of Elgar’s ghost, my instinct is that there is something.’

Sophie scowled.

‘Please? I’ve a christening this afternoon, and then I’m supposed to go to this parish meeting. Or not.’

Sophie went to sit at her own desk, waved a limp hand.

‘Go on…’

‘I need to know enough to be able to discount crap, but I have to be prepared for the possibility of it not being crap. Which would leave two options: an imprint or what Huw Owen would describe as an insomniac.’

‘A restless spirit.’

‘In this case, an angry spirit, disturbed – much as you are – over the invasion of the Malverns by the hoodies and bling element. Which is a potentially sensitive issue because of … well…’

‘Racism. Always the weapon used against us. As if appalling behaviour and criminal acts should be protected for so-called cultural reasons.’

‘Lol reckons that, with Elgar, it wasn’t so much political patriotism as a pure love of the countryside – the landscape itself. That in fact he even developed a bit of a distaste for “Land of Hope and Glory”? That true?’

‘I suppose he had misgivings about the jingoism in the words. He was a lifelong Conservative, however, Merrily, never forget that.’

‘Although, unless I’m wrong –’ Merrily remembering something else from Elgar – A Hereford Guide ‘– a good friend of lifelong socialist George Bernard Shaw?’

‘No, you’re not wrong,’ Sophie said, maybe through her teeth. ‘What point are you making?’

‘Just trying to form an opinion on whether, in theory, the raging essence of Edward Elgar might be summoned, like King Arthur from his cave, by a blast of trip-hop over his sacred hills. If something’s happening, then something must have set it off.’

‘You don’t believe that for one minute.’

‘Open mind, Sophie. It’s what this job’s about.’

‘And what’s the alternative?’

‘The alternative, if we’re accepting the possibility of a paranormal element, is an imprint. Spicer says Elgar used to bike through Wychehill, maybe stopping for a pint of cider at the Royal Oak.’

‘Possibly when he was exploring the location of his cantata Caractacus, in the 1890s. Its main setting is Herefordshire Beacon.’

‘It’s about the last stand of the Celts against the Romans?’

‘A legend now discredited. The final defeat of Caractacus was probably not, as once suggested, on the Beacon. Which wouldn’t have bothered Elgar too much. He simply loved the drama of it and … was fascinated, I’m afraid, by Druid ritual. Blood-sacrifices and prophecies in the oak groves.’

‘I should listen to it.’

‘Yes, you should, but you’ll find it essentially a patriotic work dedicated to Queen Victoria. Ending with what I expect you would call an imperialist rant – the British might have been defeated this time but would rise again, with an empire greater than Rome’s.’

‘I expect it was … of its time. And presumably – again – he didn’t write the words?’

‘Elgar told his publisher that he’d suggested the librettist should dabble in patriotism, but didn’t expect the man to “get naked and wallow in it.”’

Merrily smiled.

‘Actually,’ Sophie said, ‘thinking about this, his cycling phase might have begun later, although it certainly started at Birchwood. Possibly while he was completing his masterpiece, The Dream of Gerontius.’

‘That’s not set in the Malverns, though, is it?’

‘Merrily, your ignorance of great music astonishes me. It’s set in the afterlife.’

‘Erm … OK. But we can assume Elgar was familiar with Wychehill? Travelling that road – on his bike or on foot – drawing from the landscape and also projecting his imagination into it. Fitting the criteria for an imprint – a recurring image in a particular location. A recording on an atmospheric loop.’

Sophie’s face was expressionless. Merrily wondered sometimes if she believed any of this. Even for someone as unwaveringly High Church as Sophie, Christianity could still be a discipline rather than a journey of discovery.

‘He undoubtedly did draw from the landscape and always saw his music through nature. Even as a boy, sitting by the river, he said he wanted to write down what the reeds were saying. Much later he was to say that the air was full of music and you just took as much as you required.’

Interesting. Merrily made a note.

‘His principal biographer, Jerrold Northrop-Moore, an American, says the Cello Concerto projected to him – in America – an image of a landscape he’d never seen, and when he finally came over to Worcestershire it all seemed strangely familiar. He also suggests that Elgar’s pattern of composition reflects the physical rhythm of the Malvern Hills.’

‘And Lol said that when he was dying…’

‘Either he was being gently humorous in his final hours or he truly believed his spirit belonged in the hills. Does that fit your criteria for an imprint?’

‘Maybe more than that,’ Merrily said. ‘But let’s settle for an imprint for the moment.’

‘And is that necessarily bad? An animation that simply replays itself?’

The phone rang and then stopped as Sophie reached out a hand. She sat back and rearranged her glasses on their chain.

‘Linking Elgar with road-death, however, is abusive to the point of indecency.’

‘People are worried.’

‘And to allay their fears, you call upon God to banish the spirit of a genius?’

The phone rang again, and Sophie hooked it up. ‘Gatehouse.’ She covered the mouthpiece. ‘Might it not be appropriate to bring this whole issue to the attention of the Bishop?’

‘Not yet. Let’s see what happens tonight.’

So where did you go with this?

Perhaps you started by strolling across the Cathedral green to confront the compact, tidy gent in bronze, leaning…

… On his bike. Of course he was.

Mr Phoebus, if this was Mr Phoebus, didn’t have a lamp. But then his wheels didn’t have any spokes either.

It was, Merrily thought, essentially a modest, unobtrusive piece. Life-size, dapper: Elgar the bloke. She sat on the grass in the sunshine with an egg mayonnaise sandwich, contemplating him from a distance while finishing off Elgar – A Hereford Guide.

Finally, she wandered across.

Could you … ? Keeping a respectful distance. Could you possibly help me, Sir Edward?

Look, this wasn’t stupid. Sometimes … call it intuition, call it divine inspiration, call it…

But Elgar had higher things on his mind. Overdressed for the weather, he was gazing at the Cathedral tower with its unsightly scaffolding. The Cathedral where he’d spent so many hours – even, in later years, recording some of his music there.

Look, I accept that I don’t know enough about your work. I’m sorry. I hope to deal with that.

No reaction.

No impressions. No guidance. Elgar was miles away, and music was Merrily’s blind spot. In church, anyway. All the trite Victorian hymns she’d been trying to edge out of services for the past two years.

Everything the sculpture had to say to her was written on its plinth. A quote which someone – maybe even a committee – had thought essential to an understanding of the man and his work.

But it was interesting.

‘THIS IS WHAT I GET EVERY DAY. THE TREES ARE SINGING MY MUSIC – OR AM I SINGING THEIRS?’

Merrily walked around Elgar, looking over his shoulder, following his gaze.

‘You’re asking me?’

17 Isolated

In the scullery, the answering machine was bleeping petulantly when Merrily got in. Bride’s mother requesting a second rehearsal for one of next week’s weddings – how much time did these people think you had? Then a reminder that she was expected to chair the Ledwardine Summer Fair planning meeting next Monday, and finally a hollow pause, a throat-clearing and this mild but slightly pompous southern Scottish accent.

‘Mrs Watkins, my name is Leonard Holliday, and this concerns your visit to Wychehill. Pointless calling me back, I shall be all over the place. I simply wanted to say, as the chairman of the Wychehill Residents’ Action Group, that I’ve inspected your Hereford Deliverance website, and frankly I think your presence at the parish meeting would not be helpful.’

Sounded as if he was reading a prepared statement.

‘I’m afraid there’s been quite an hysterical reaction to some regrettable incidents. Some people are seeking to sensationalize a serious issue, in a way which would only make our campaign look fatuous. Therefore, on behalf of my committee – and we’ve made our feelings clear, also, to the Rector – I’d like to request that you do not attend this meeting. I’m sure you can see the sense of this. Thank you.’

Merrily sat down at the desk, watching the machine reset itself. Some insect rammed the window and bounced away.

Right.

She called Syd Spicer. If there’d been some change of heart in Wychehill, he ought to have told her about it before now.

No answer. Not even an answering machine. What kind of rectory didn’t have an answering machine? With less than an hour to spare before she’d need to leave for the christening, she rang Directory Enquiries and obtained numbers for Preston Devereaux and Joyce Aird.

Devereaux first.

‘No, this is Louis.’ A deep drawl, but a young man’s drawl. ‘He’s out, I’m afraid. Who’s that with the rather sexy voice?’

‘Thank you. My name’s Merrily Watkins, I’m calling about—’

‘The exorcist. Cool.’

‘You’re Mr Devereaux’s son, I take it.’

‘I’m going to be fascinated to see what you do.’

‘You may be disappointed.’

‘I really don’t think so, Mrs Watkins. My little brother found your picture on the Net. I think he’s taken it to his bedroom.’

Merrily sighed. ‘When will your dad be in?’

‘Not for hours. He has meetings all day. But he’ll be back for yours, you can count on that.’

‘I’ll look forward to it.’

Good to know there was still respect for the Church. She hung up and dialled Joyce Aird’s number.

Engaged.

Merrily was close to being late for the christening when Frannie Bliss phoned. ‘As I hadn’t heard from you, Merrily, I assumed you’d stumbled upon something in Wychehill which your conscience was telling you it was inadvisable to share with the Filth.’

‘For once, I don’t actually think I know anything useful – not to you, anyway.’

‘Witnesses never know what they know until it’s squeezed out of them by a master interrogator.’

‘How long would it take to fetch one? I’m a bit pushed right now.’

‘I hope God finds you less offensive, Merrily. All right, I’ll tell you something. Our experts, examining the remains of the Mazda car belonging to the late Mr Lincoln Cookman, killed in Wychehill in the early hours of Saturday, had occasion to remove the spare tyre. And found a neat little package containing forty assorted rocks. And, no, he wasn’t a geologist.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Quite.’

‘You’re assuming he’d just picked up the package at the Royal Oak.’

‘If you only knew how hard I’d tried to come up with a better explanation.’

‘And are the police planning to do anything about this? Raid the Oak?’

‘I think that would be an embarrassingly fruitless exercise, don’t you? Something like this, you only get one chance, and I’m waiting for firm intelligence. I gather there’s a meeting on in Wychehill, at which the problem of the Royal Oak is likely to be raised.’

‘Yes, it’s – tomorrow. Isn’t it?’

‘It’s tonight, Merrily.’

‘How did you find out?’

‘I’m a detective. We were planning to look in, on an unofficial basis, but I’m told that would now be rather obvious.’

‘Look, I’ve got to leave for a christening in a couple of minutes and then I was hoping to have a serious discussion with my only child when she gets in from school. What are you looking for?’

‘Well, certainly something more than general rowdyism and weeing over walls. Like if illegal drugs were coming into Wychehill itself? Must be a few likely teenagers there. If we were to receive a serious complaint from a parent or two … Something I can dangle in front of Howe. I’m looking for a lever, Merrily.’

‘I’m a vicar, Frannie.’

‘And a mate,’ Bliss said. ‘I hope.’

After the christening of Laurel Catherine Mathilda and a brief appearance at the christening tea in the village hall, Merrily walked up to the market square under an overcast, purpling sky, and decided to wait for the school bus.

She looked up towards Cole Hill, but you couldn’t see it from here, although you could from the church. Wished she had time to investigate this ley line for herself. Leys … well, they were something she still wasn’t sure about. They could never be proved actually to exist, but they had … a kind of poetic truth. They lit up the countryside.

And if Jane had found a way of lighting up the countryside without drugs…

Best not to get too heavy about her taking a day off school. As long as she didn’t make a habit of it.

Merrily looked down into Church Street, at Lol’s house. Wished she could light up the countryside for him. Under the shadow of middle age, he was understandably uncertain about his future. Set for stardom at eighteen and then robbed by bitter circumstance of what should have been the glory years. Too old, now, to be the new Nick Drake. His comeback album was selling reasonably well, he’d done gigs supporting Moira Cairns and the two old Hazey Jane albums had been remastered. But it still wasn’t quite a career.

Now he was writing material for the second solo album. It wasn’t going well. Although he didn’t say much, she could feel his fear sometimes.

She turned, as the school bus drew up on the edge of the square and some kids got off.

And Jane didn’t.

Merrily’s heart froze. Stupid. This didn’t automatically mean she’d skipped school again. Sometimes Eirion picked her up. However…

She went straight home and called Jane’s phone from her own mobile. Jane’s was switched off. She left a message: call now. Put the mobile on the sermon pad and then sat down and rang Joyce Aird in Wychehill.

‘I’ve caused a lot of trouble, haven’t I?’

Merrily was cautious. ‘In what way, Mrs Aird?’

‘I had a visit…’ Her voice sounded unsteady. ‘I was told this could bring us the wrong sort of attention and I’ve done the community a great disservice. I’ve lived here more than twenty years, Mrs Watkins…’

‘Asking for me to come and look into … ? That’s the disservice?’

‘I only did what I thought was best.’

‘This is Mr Holliday, is it?’

‘It’s what we’ve become, I’m afraid. It’s all about how it looks. Doesn’t matter what the truth is any more.’

‘Matters to me.’

‘You don’t live here, Mrs Watkins. It’s not a nice place to live any more. Nobody’s friendly.’

‘Is that since these ghost stories—?’

‘I feel I’m becoming a prisoner in my own home. Locked doors and drawn curtains and … and the lights on all night. That’s what it’s come to. I can’t be in the dark. And I love my bungalow. I love the view … I did love it. Now it feels so isolated. I was going to give it till next year, but I’ve been thinking I’d better put the house on the market in the summer.’

‘Do you have anywhere to go?’

‘Back to Solihull, I expect. I should’ve moved back when my husband died. It’s never the same on your own, though I do love my sunsets.’

‘I’m really sorry, Joyce, but I don’t think you should jump to—’

‘Anyway, don’t you worry. If they don’t want you, there’s nothing you can do about it, is there?’

‘I’m sorry … I’m a bit confused here. I’ve had a message on the answering machine from Mr Holliday, who obviously doesn’t want me … but I’m not sure it’s his decision to make.’

‘He said the Rector was going to tell you.’

‘Tell me?’

‘Not to come to the meeting. That they don’t want you.’

‘I see,’ Merrily said. ‘Would this … have anything to do with the late Sir Edward Elgar?’

‘We haven’t to use that name, Mrs Watkins. That’s what I’ve been told.’

18 What Remains of Reason

Inside, the huge parish church of St Dunstan was as plain and functional as Syd Spicer’s kitchen. Its Gothic windows were puritanical plain glass, diamond-leaded, and the light on this overcast Midsummer’s Eve was cruelly neutral, showing Merrily how dispiriting it must be for Spicer on Sunday mornings, his meagre congregation scattered two to a pew and less than a quarter of the pews filled. Like a village cricket match at Lord’s.

But, as Wychehill didn’t have a community hall, the church accommodated the parish meetings, so maybe its ambience would confer stability, calm, wisdom, dignity.

Or not.

‘They found drugs in that car, you know.’ Leonard Holliday – she’d recognized the voice at once – was on his feet across the aisle: crimped gunmetal hair, neat beard. ‘Did you know?’

Holliday must have police contacts. Maybe Masonic?

‘No, I didn’t know,’ Preston Devereaux said wearily. ‘I have a business to run. I don’t have much time for gossip.’

‘Ecstasy tablets, Chairman. They say one can buy them like sweeties at the Royal Oak.’

OK, maybe his contacts weren’t that good.

‘And you know why the district council, as the licensing authority, will not act against that place?’ Holliday jabbing a forefinger at nobody in particular. ‘You know why they won’t shut it down – and I can disclose this with some authority, having worked in local government for forty years, and damned glad to be out of it…’

‘Mr Holliday—’

‘The reason they will not act, Chairman, is that, as with so many tourist areas, the level of government grant-aid is now, to a large extent, dependent on the council and the tourism bodies being able to prove that they are attracting a sufficient number of black and Asian visitors. This is a fact. And these … music nights at the Oak are seen as especially attractive to that particular—’

‘All right.’ Preston Devereaux banging his gavel. ‘As most of you seem to be members of the Wychehill Residents’ Action Group, I don’t think we need to complicate matters by going further into this issue tonight.’

He was at a table set up at the foot of the chancel steps, the chair next to him empty. The chancel was large and unscreened, its choir stalls in a semicircular formation, like a concert hall. More like a concert hall, in fact, than a place of worship, and as stark as a Welsh chapel.

It was just after nine p.m., the atmosphere thickening. Merrily wore a dark skirt and one of Jane’s hoodies, zipped up to cover the dog collar. She’d slipped into a shadowy and empty back pew, just after eight-thirty. Thirty or forty people sitting in front of her, including … was that Joyce Aird? The normal parish meeting seemed to have started at seven; three people had left in the past half-hour.

Syd Spicer didn’t seem to be here. She wasn’t sure what this meant, but it probably wasn’t a good sign. Preston Devereaux leaned back, looking through half-lidded eyes out into the uncrowded nave.

‘I think we need to keep cool heads as we come to the final item … although, to be quite honest, I don’t want to come to it at all. In fact, I feel embarrassed to be chairing a discussion of this nature, having no wish to watch this community casting off what remains of its reason.’

Devereaux was lean and weathered and keen-eyed, with longish hair the colour of Malvern stone, sideburns ridged like treebark. His accent was local, educated, grounded. He wore a brown leather jacket over a shirt and tie.

‘However, because I find myself tragically implicated in this situation, I feel obliged to give it a public hearing. Essentially, we have a road-safety issue caused, I believe, by an increase in traffic through the village, due to increased tourism and … other developments.’

Somebody laughed. It had a bitter edge.

‘However,’ the chairman said, ‘there has been quite a sharp increase in the number of road accidents lately, which has given rise to rumours which I shall describe conservatively as outlandish. Who’s going to start us off on this? Helen—’

A woman stood up in one of the front pews.

‘Helen Truscott. I use this road probably more than any of you, and I don’t believe in ghosts.’

Someone clapped. Helen Truscott turned to face the assembly. Mid-fifties, brisk, attractive. You’d trust her judgement.

‘I’m a district nurse by profession, and I’m also the carer for my disabled dad. And he worries when I’m out, particularly at night, and I’d like to clear this matter up, so that he can stop worrying.’

This would be the daughter of D. H. Walford who had written to the Rector.

‘Thank you, Helen. We take your point. Anybody else? Mrs Aird?’

‘Well…’ Joyce Aird stood up, alone in a pew halfway down the nave. ‘I think when there are a number of accidents, one after the other, we’re all bound to feel a little nervous, and we can’t help wondering if there’s something going on that we don’t understand. Especially those of us who live alone and perhaps have too much time to think. I’m a churchgoer, so I … when I get upset I turn to God. But I suppose I’m in the minority these days, so I … I’ll…’

She sat down. Merrily noticed that the two vases of fresh lilies she must have put out on the chairman’s table were on the flagged floor beside it.

‘Thank you, Mrs Aird,’ Devereaux said. ‘As we’re all churchgoers tonight, I’m sure God will be sympathetic. But I think this issue lies rather with the creations of man. The problem here’s always been that, because of the positioning of the dwellings in Wychehill, mostly out of sight of the road, motorists do not realize there’s a community here – scattered though it may be – of more than two hundred people. And so they tend to speed. Mr Holliday—’

Holliday was back on his feet, making it clear that the Wychehill Residents’ Action Group, now extending to at least four other communities in the area, would be dissociating itself from any course of action designed to legitimize superstition.

‘And indeed, Chairman, the very idea of suggesting that the ghost of Sir Ed—’

Clack. The end of his sentence was chipped off by the gavel.

‘The cyclist, sir, if you please. There’ll be no ridiculous conjecture in my meeting.’

‘The idea that the story of the cyclist –’ Holliday smirked ‘– would generate wider publicity for our campaign now seems…’ He coughed. ‘It seems clear to me that this would succeed only in leaving us open to ridicule.’

‘But you thought about it, didn’t you, Leonard?’ Devereaux said.

‘It did occur to me, yes, I’m rather ashamed to say, and I’ve now rejected it.’

‘Very wise of you, sir.’ Devereaux smiled. ‘Now, I think we have a proposal…’

A man stood up.

‘I’d like to propose that, in the wake of the weekend’s fatality, we renew our call to the County Council and the police for the installation of speed cameras.’

‘Right, proposal by Mr Sedgefield, of The Wellhouse.’

‘Seconded,’ another guy said without getting up. ‘Perhaps they’ll capture this bloody ghost on film – then we’d all be able to see it.’

Laughter. Preston Devereaux gavelled for silence, letting his smile fade.

‘I don’t really see there’s much more we can do than that. But before I close the meeting, regarding the very regrettable incident involving myself at the weekend, several people have asked me two questions which, with the meeting’s permission, I’d like to answer publicly tonight. Question one: no, I’m glad to say I was not hurt, for which I have to thank the famously robust physique of the British Land Rover. I very much wish, mind, that I’d been in my ordinary car – might’ve been able to get out of the way in time and the whole thing might’ve been less serious. But fate decided otherwise. Therefore, I’d like to propose that the whole community join me in expressing our condolences to the families of the two young people. Because, whatever some of us may think about the Royal Oak…’

Subdued murmurs were lifted by the church’s crisp acoustics into a substantial expression of assent.

‘Good,’ Preston Devereaux said. ‘Now … question two. Simple answer: no, of course I bloody didn’t!’

Laughter. Devereaux half-rose.

‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Now, unless anyone has something to add, I’d like to formally close this meet— I’m sorry, was that a hand at the back?’

‘Yes, if I could just…’

She’d probably regret this later, Merrily thought, but you could only stand so much of this kind of crap.

She stood up, pulling down her zip.

The admonishing angel in her head looked a lot like Sophie.

‘Oh, wow, look over there…’

Jane was standing on the massive, half-collapsed capstone, this huge jutting wedge. She was gazing to the south-west, the evening light thickly around her like the pith of some vast luminous orange, and she felt that if she jumped off now she’d go on flying, in a dead straight line to the crooked mountain on the horizon.

Arthur’s Stone was the most impressive prehistoric monument in Herefordshire. It crouched like a dinosaur skeleton on Merbach Hill, above the Golden Valley, which melted like grilled cheese into Wales. Arthur’s Stone was not one stone but many … the remains of a dolmen or cromlech, a Bronze Age burial chamber which had once been covered with earth.

Alfred Watkins had found several leys passing through here, connecting it with country churches and unexcavated burial mounds and the remains of a medieval castle on an ancient hilltop site at Snodhill.

And if you stood where Jane was standing, on top of the monument, you could see, in misty profile…

‘It’s the Skirrid, isn’t it?’ Eirion said.

Like he could fail to recognize the holy mountain of Gwent, which he could see every day from his bedroom window just like Jane could see Cole Hill. The volcanic mountain cleft in two, according to legend, at the moment when Christ died on the cross.

Lying in Eirion’s bed in the heat of the afternoon Jane had found herself visualizing the elemental force that split the mountain just as…

Oh God, was that some kind of sacrilege?

The day replayed itself in her memory: one of those wild, hazy days when you weren’t aware of how magical it had been until it was nearly over.

She’d persuaded Eirion not to go to school – school hardly mattered at his stage of the game, A levels over, future in the lap of the gods. They’d gone back to his dad’s place at Abergavenny and compiled the Coleman’s Meadow document on his computer, with the photos and quotes from The Old Straight Track. Eirion had rewritten Jane’s rant, draining off some of the vitriol, and, she had to admit, it now seemed more rational and convincing. And then, with his dad and his stepmother safely away at the same conference in North Wales, they’d gone to bed.

Afterwards, she’d tried to ring Mum at the vicarage to imply subtly, without actually lying, that Eirion was picking her up from school. But Mum wasn’t there, and the mobile was switched off most of the time. And then she’d remembered that Mum was going to be at a meeting over on the other side of the county for most of the evening, which left her and Eirion whole hours to go in search of the old straight track.

Eirion, in his post-coital whatever mood, had been cool about it, so they’d started off by looking for Alfred Watkins himself. First and foremost a Herefordshire man, it had said in his obituary in the Hereford Times in 1935, as native to the county as the hop and the apple.

Jane had found that in the Watkins biography by Ron Shoesmith, which had taken them in search of Vineyard Croft, the house near the River Wye, on the edge of the city, where Alfred had lived for about thirty years with his wife, Marion. But they couldn’t find it; they found a Vineyard Road, but it seemed all suburbs around there now. It was much easier to locate the house the Watkinses had moved to, just off the Cathedral green. It actually had a plaque on it, identifying its importance – probably the nearest thing to a monument to Alfred in the entire county.

‘There ought to be an official Watkins memorial ley,’ Eirion had said. ‘Where you can stand and have the whole line pointed out for you.’

‘So that even councillors could see what it was about?’

‘They’d only be able to follow it if it was marked out in new branches of Asda and B & Q.’

We really understand each other, don’t we? Jane thought. And in a few weeks he’ll be gone.

She felt very close to tears and climbed down from the stone before she was tempted to throw herself into the horizon.

In the normal way of things, you were consulted by worried individuals whose world-view had been jogged out of focus – frightened people mugged by skewed circumstance. Since yours was the only hand reaching out they switched off their scepticism and clasped it.

Always individuals. Never a community, a society, a committee. In any random group, scepticism ruled.

‘I’m confused, Mr Chairman,’ Merrily said.

‘Can’t have that.’ Preston Devereaux peered into the growing gloom. ‘I pride myself on clarity. May we have your name, madam?’

‘I’m, erm, Merrily Watkins.’

‘Are you indeed?’

‘I’m a consultant to the Diocese of Hereford on matters … paranormal. And…’ she saw Joyce Aird had turned, looking both grateful and worried ‘… the Rector asked me to come tonight.’

‘He must’ve forgotten to mention it to me,’ Devereaux said. ‘And as that particular item has now been dealt with—’

‘It hasn’t really been dealt with, though, has it? It’s just been pushed under the table.’

Lot of heads turning, some muttering. No going back now.

‘Mrs Watson—’

‘Watkins. And I’m not a big conspiracy theorist, but I’ve encountered enough cover-ups in the past couple of years to recognize—’

‘Madam!’ The gavel came down with a crack that must have dented the table. ‘Let no one accuse me of that.’

‘I’m not accusing—’

‘I think you’d better forsake the shelter of your back pew and attempt to justify it, Reverend.’

Preston Devereaux pulled out the chair next to his, calling out to the back of the church.

‘Can we have some decent light on the proceedings?’

19 Unload It

Merrily stood up in the brittle, glassy light. She felt weak with fury.

Moved into the aisle, reaching into her bag to switch off her mobile. Would have felt better about this if Jane had called. In the end she’d gone round to Lol’s, asked if he’d mind staying behind and trying to find her. OK, she was seventeen, for heaven’s sake, nearly an adult. And yet…

Oh God, get me through this.

She stepped behind the table next to the chairman, looking out at twenty or thirty people, widely spaced, Winnie Sparke standing out in a crocheted white woollen shawl.

Lights came on, as if to dispense with the possibility of anything beyond normal occurring here. They were theatre-type spotlights, directed at the chancel, presumably for use during the choral concerts. The lights put the congregation into shadow and hurt your eyes when you looked up.

Merrily looked down.

‘The main qualification for this job is, I’ve discovered, a high embarrassment threshold.’

Nobody even smiled.

‘I was told – by the Rector, who doesn’t seem to be here tonight – that at least four people had had experience of an inexplicable light, sometimes accompanied by a figure, in the road outside. Each sighting preceding an accident of some kind.’

She paused. Were they out there now? Tim Loste, Stella Cobham? Or had they been persuaded, by whoever had gagged Joyce Aird, to stay away? She thought about all the hours she’d spent, dragging Lol out to Wychehill, fruitlessly knocking on doors, needlessly infuriating the uniquely invaluable Sophie.

‘The message spelled out tonight by Mr Holliday is that it’s all superstitious rubbish. And he was thoughtful enough to put all that on my answering machine earlier today, when he phoned to advise me not to bother coming.’

A few murmurs at last. She could see Holliday, stiff-faced, in a left-hand pew, second row.

‘Now what I’m gathering from what’s been said is that Mr Holliday had earlier considered that the alleged phenomenon might have been useful as a publicity gimmick … to focus attention on his campaign against what’s happening at the Royal Oak. Get the protest into the national papers. Maybe on TV.’

Merrily paused again, looking over to where she’d last seen Holliday, giving him a warm smile – the pompous, duplicitous git.

‘You can see the TV reports now, can’t you? Long shot of the hills at sunset, overlaid with some suitably serene pastoral music written by … the cyclist.’

Preston Devereaux’s chair creaked.

‘Mrs Watkins, I think—’

‘And then it goes dark,’ Merrily said. ‘And we see the Royal Oak throbbing with purple strobe lights and a blast of drum-’n’-bass all over the forecourt. And then Mr Holliday steps into shot with a grim face and a petition to the council.’

‘Mrs Watkins.’

‘All right … I’m sorry.’ Putting up her hands, turning to Preston Devereaux. ‘Mr Chairman, I take it that you were tacitly informing us a few minutes ago that in the moments before that horrific crash you did not see a strange light or a strange cyclist. But where are the people who insist that they did? Is Mr Loste here tonight, for instance? Because I’d’ve thought if this meeting was to make a decision it ought to hear all the evidence. Mr Loste?’

She peered into the lights. Silence.

‘Well … thanks, Mr Chairman. That’s all I wanted to say, really. Just didn’t want anyone to think that, having been invited, I’d failed to show up. Thank you.’

Merrily shouldered her bag amid a rush of whispers. Preston Devereaux said nothing. She slid around the table and walked away, out of the spotlight pool, down into the shadows of the left-hand aisle, aware of hushed discussions opening up on both sides, like a small motor coming to life, and then the scuffling sound of someone standing up.

‘Wait…’ A tall woman, black top, spiky red hair, standing sideways in the pew space.

Merrily stopped and leaned against a pew-end.

‘I saw it,’ the woman said. ‘This fully formed man on a bike – high up on his bike, this great, black…’ she stared around the church ‘… pulpit of a bike. Right there in front of me. And I wasn’t drunk, whatever people are saying. I hadn’t been drinking. When they gave me a breath test, it was totally negative. But I’m telling you I saw him. He was there. Absolutely and totally … bloody there.’

‘You’re…’ Merrily felt a small worm of excitement uncurling in her spine. ‘You’re Mrs Cobham, right?’

‘Correct. I swerved and he vanished and I went into this bloody camper van about half a second later.’

‘How did you feel at that moment?’

‘Feel? Mixture of … shock and … just sheer, primitive terror. I thought I was actually going to die. Die of shock, you know? All I remember after that was being out of the car and just standing at the side of the road, shivering. They wouldn’t come near me, the people in the camper, they wouldn’t leave their vehicle, I must’ve looked—’

‘Was there any … change in the atmosphere when you saw the cyclist? The temperature?’

Merrily saw that the focus of the room had altered, people drifting to the ends of pews on either side, two semicircles forming and Preston Devereaux on his own by the chancel, sitting upright, his long sideburns like the chinstrap of a helmet. Stella Cobham gripped the pew in front of her.

‘I felt cold. Whether that was just the shock … Couldn’t seem to keep a limb still until daylight. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t think of anything else. Kept seeing him again and again in my head. I can see him now.’

‘Mrs Watkins…’ Preston Devereaux was on his feet. ‘This is neither the time nor the place…’

Merrily just kept on talking to Stella Cobham, a damped-down silence around them, the windows in the nave filled with a dull purple half-light that didn’t go anywhere.

‘Could he see you, do you think?’

‘I don’t think he could see anything. His eyes were … somewhere in the distance. It was the eyes I remember most. It was the eyes that … there’s a photo of him on the back of one of these books we bought – it’s called Elgar, Child of Dreams – and it’s one of those double exposures with his face superimposed on the hills, and his eyes are looking away, into some sort of infinity? You know? And there are these pinpoints of light in his eyes. Where’s … where’s Tim Loste?’

‘Gone,’ a man said. ‘Or he didn’t come.’

‘Well, can somebody get him back? Because he’ll be able to tell you—’

‘Leave him alone.’ Helen Truscott had appeared in the aisle next to Merrily. ‘He’s not well.’

‘Oh God, the fount of all medical bloody knowledge. I’m trying to give him a chance to unload it.’

‘And you think he’ll be happy to have his beloved Elgar exorcized? There, I’ve said the forbidden name, too. You don’t understand about Tim, do you?’

‘I understand what I saw, Mrs Truscott…’

‘You don’t understand what state that man’s in. You leave him alone.’

‘Look, I was told people would say I was sick or mental or drunk, like Loste, and I … I’ve forgotten your name.’

‘Merrily.’

‘Well, Merry, whatever they’re saying.’ She swung her head angrily from side to side like a gun turret. ‘I’m telling you there is something wrong here. The cyclist … Jesus.’

In the swollen silence, Merrily looked around and saw … individuals. All these people together but essentially still pews apart. Maybe they knew one another by sight, by name, by reputation, but they were no more than a cluster of islands with separate climates, separate cultures.

Isolation. Midsummer Eve, and a chill in the air in a too-big church.

‘Excuse me.’ Preston Devereaux was brushing past. ‘I suspect this meeting is now over. Would the last lunatic out of the building please turn off the lights?’

‘Yeah, you go, Mr Devereaux!’ Stella Cobham snarling at his back. ‘You piss off. You keep nice and quiet about whatever you saw. You play it down. You weren’t for playing everything down when the fox-hunting thing was on, were you?’

Devereaux stopped. ‘That’s over. It’s over and we lost. You move on.’

Which was what he did. He walked out. At the same time, Merrily saw Leonard Holliday and three or four other people moving down the second aisle towards the main door … and more faces were swimming towards her.

‘If this—’ She took a breath, inspiration coming. ‘If this is really an issue, I’d just like to point out that the possibility of me or anyone attempting to exorcize Sir Edward Elgar … that is very much not an option. And even if there was a connection with Elgar—’

‘You can take it from me,’ Helen Truscott said, ‘that the connection was entirely in one unbalanced mind.’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘And the devious heads of a few opportunists, who I hope have now seen the error of their ways.’

‘What I was going to say, Mrs Truscott, is, if there really is evidence of some pervading negative spiritual presence here, then a small roadside blessing is probably neither sufficient nor appropriate. I was going to say that another way of dealing with it would be to hold a full Requiem Eucharist, here in the church … perhaps extending out to the roadside?’

‘What’s that?’ Stella Cobham said.

‘A requiem is basically a funeral service. It’s not something we do lightly, but it’s sometimes a way of drawing a line under something.’

‘You want to hold a service for the cyclist?’

‘As some of you are a bit unsure about that, I’d be more inclined to suggest a service for the two people who died here last weekend, Lincoln and … Sonia? But I wouldn’t do it unless I was persuaded that there was a good reason, and I’d need to consult the relatives.’

The mobile began to chime in Merrily’s shoulder bag. She didn’t even remember switching it back on. She saw Joyce Aird staring at her, mouth half-open.

‘You want to hold a full requiem – a communion service – for those drug dealers?’

‘Think I need to take this call, if you don’t mind.’ Merrily backed off. ‘Look, that’s just a proposal, OK? If you want to have a bit of a discussion about this, I’ve got some cards in my bag with my phone number and my email if anyone wants to … talk about anything privately or tell me anything. Excuse me, I’ll be back.’

She hurried to the door, pulling out the phone, slumping on a bench in the porch with her bag on her knees.

‘Jane?’

‘Where are you, Merrily?’

Bliss.

‘I’m at Wychehill Church. Why? What’s happened?’

‘You don’t know?’ Bliss said.

She went cold, thinking as always, Jane.

‘Stop messing about, Frannie.’

She could hear the sounds of a car engine, the intermission of Bliss thinking.

‘Don’t go away,’ he said. ‘Might pick you up on the way, if that’s all right with you.’

‘The way to where?’

‘We’ve gorran incident.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘Look, if you want to stick around I’ll pick you up on me way. Be about half an hour. Yeh, do that, would you? Stick around.’

The line was cut. Bloody cop-speak. Why did they never spell it out? What was she supposed to do now? She stood in the church doorway, the sky outside the colour of the flash around a blackened eye. It must be nearly half past ten.

Behind her, the church door swung to and someone coughed lightly. There was a whiff of jasmine on the air.

‘You’re cute,’ Winnie Sparke said. ‘I thought the exorcist was the guy with you, and you didn’t put me right.’

Her face was white and blurred, her hair curling into the shadows in the porch.

‘What’s wrong with this place?’ Merrily said.

‘You noticed that, huh?’

‘Sorry, I think I was talking to myself.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you, anyway. Too much quarrying, way back, is what’s wrong. Way back for us, that is, but like yesterday in the memory of rocks millions of years old. The hills are still hurting.’

‘You think?’

‘This is not a place to settle, believe me. Bad place to be, when the rocks are in pain, and you can take it from me, lady, these rocks hurt like hell.’

20 Accidents Happens

He was winding the new lime-green line into his brush-cutter head without even looking at it – finishing up with the two ends of line exactly the same length and pointing in different directions, the way the manufacturers and God had intended.

Incredible. Jane had tried this once, with just an ordinary garden strimmer, and about fifteen metres of the stuff had come spinning off the reel like one of those joke snakes out of a tin.

Gomer Parry had probably left school at about fourteen, and he could reload a brush cutter in three minutes, sink a septic tank, devise a stormproof field-drainage system…

… And he also knew where the bodies were buried in Ledwardine. Knew better than anybody since Lucy Devenish.

‘Bent?’ Jane said. ‘You’re serious?’

‘Not as I could prove it.’ Gomer snipped off the nylon line with his penknife. ‘But I’d prob’ly give you money on it.’

He clicked the rubberized top back on to the head and, whereas Jane would’ve been beating it against the church wall and still one corner would be hanging off, it just … stayed in place.

She became aware that she was squeezing her hands together, impatient. Which was really childish. And this was not a childish matter. It had to be got right … might just turn out to be the most important thing she would ever do.

With Mum still not back when Eirion had dropped her off at home, Jane had walked down to Gomer’s bungalow, ostensibly to return the wire-cutters she’d borrowed but really to sound him out about Lyndon Pierce. Gomer hadn’t been at home but then, coming back across the square, in the gloom of a now-sunless sunset, she’d heard the whine of the brush cutter in the churchyard.

Gomer propped the cutter against the lych-gate while he took out his ciggy tin and opened it up and inspected the contents through the specks of shredded grass on the thick lenses of his glasses.

‘Gotter be a bit careful, Janey. Walls got years. Even church walls.’

Jane looked around the churchyard and out through the lych-gate to the village square. Nobody in sight except James Bull-Davies getting into his clapped-out Land Rover.

‘Please, Gomer…’

Gomer made her wait until he’d rolled his ciggy. He was wearing his green overalls and his Doc Martens and a new work cap that looked pretty much like the old one and probably the one before that.

‘Ole churchyard’s gonner need doin’ twice a week soon.’

‘Gomer!’

Gomer did his gash of a grin, the little ciggy clamped between his teeth.

‘En’t no rocket science, Janey. Councillors … all this on the election leaflets about directin’ their skills for the good o’ the community … load of ole wallop, and they knows it and they knows you knows it.’

Gomer sniffed the air.

‘Well, all right, mabbe ’bout thirty per cent of ’em is straight-ish. Or, at least, when they first gets elected. Don’t last, see, that’s the trouble. All them good intentions goes down the toilet soon as they gets a chance of a slap o’ free tarmac for their path, or their ole ma needs plannin’ permission for a big extension to the house what her’s gonner leave ’em when her snuffs it. So all I’m sayin’ is, if you has to have dealings with your local councillor, best way’s to start off assumin’ he’s bent. Saves time.’

‘But, like, Lyndon Pierce, specifically … ?’

‘Lyndon Pierce, he en’t the sort of feller gets hisself elected juss so’s he can call hisself Councillor Pierce.’

‘Well, yeah, I realize councillors are always taking bribes from builders and people like that, so the chances are Pierce is getting a bung to make sure the Coleman’s Meadow scheme—’

‘Janey—’

Gomer started coughing, snatching his ciggy out of his mouth.

‘I’m only saying that to you, Gomer. I’m not going to shout it all over the village, am I?’

‘You don’t even whisper it, girl, less you got the proof.’

Gomer took off his glasses, blotted his watering eyes on his sleeve. Jane bit a thumbnail, dismayed. Reticence was not his style. Gomer did not do restraint.

She stood there, chewing her nail. Since Minnie died, Gomer had become almost family, which was cool, because he was good to have around – like a grandad, only better. Well past normal retirement age now, but he’d never given up work. Kept his plant-hire business going with the help of Danny Thomas, dug graves for Mum with his mini-JCB, free of charge, treated the churchyard like his own garden.

And the great thing about Gomer was that he was … untamed. Untamed by age. In a way that made you think there might actually be something quite interesting about being old, if you knew the secret.

He went over to one of the ancient caved-in tombs, where there was a big gap in the side and it was obvious that the body was long gone. He sat down on it and smoked for a while, Jane watching him and the tomb fading into the dusk.

‘When I first went into Coleman’s Meadow,’ she said, ‘I felt … I felt the last person to go there and actually see it for what it was … was Lucy Devenish.’

Gomer’s ciggy was like an ember in the shadows.

Jane said, ‘I could almost see her.’

Could almost see her now, in fact: the batwing swirl of the poncho, the hooked nose of an old Red Indian, the sharp gleam of a glancing eye, like a falcon’s.

‘Lucy hovers over this village, like a guardian of the old ways,’ Jane said. ‘That’s the way I see it.’

‘All right.’ Gomer stood up, brushing ash from his overalls. ‘First knowed him when he was a mean-minded little kid.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Pierce. One day, middle of January, Lucy caught him shooting at the blue tits with his air-rifle, when they come down to the nut feeder Alf Hayden used to hang by the ole gate into the orchard.’

‘Bastard. How old was he then?’

‘Mabbe fourteen? I wasn’t living yere then, but we was dealing with a drainage problem, side of the orchard, for Rod Powell, and I’m in the ole digger when I years Lucy’s voice shoutin’ at somebody to hand over that gun now, kind of thing. So I goes trundlin’ over, in the digger, and there’s Lyndon Pierce pointin’ the bloody thing at Lucy.’

‘He was threatening to shoot Lucy?’

Jane started to tingle. It was – wow – like she’d been guided to this.

‘Kids is daft,’ Gomer said. ‘Don’t think ’fore they acts. ’Course, when he sees the digger, he hides the gun behind his back, but I leaves the engine running, see, jumps down the other side, grabs it off him. As I recall, it wound up under one of the caterpillars of the JCB. Accidents happens, Janey.’

‘I am so proud of you, Gomer.’

‘Boy tells his dad I’ve stole the gun off him. Dad rings me, threatens me I’ll get no more work in this village ever again.’

‘How could he do that?’

‘’Cause he was on the council. Two councillors representin’ Ledwardine in them days, see – Garrod Powell and Percy Pierce. Then they had a big reorganization, and it was reduced to one, and Percy lets Rod have it uncontested, like. Real noble of him. Har! Amazin’ all the arrangements as went through after that, to the benefit of Percy. Had a dealership in farm machinery, see, and some interestin’ contracts comes his way, through the council, as wouldn’t have looked quite right if he’d still been on the council. Also – you know what agricultural occupancy’s about, Janey?’

‘That’s where there’s a house that nobody can live in unless they can prove they’re making a living from the land?’

‘More or less. Point bein’, a dwellin’ with an agricultural restriction, you can’t ask much money for him. So there was this bit of a jerry-built 1960s bungalow, bottom of Virgingate Lane, feller name of Ronnie Carpenter owned it, with fifteen acres, and he needed the money and he couldn’t find nobody wanted to buy this ole place on account of fifteen acres don’t give you much of a livin’ no more. So Ronnie tries to get the restriction lifted so’s he could flog it to somebody with the money to replace it with a proper house. Ronnie keeps applyin’, keeps gettin’ turned down … and then suddenly it goes through. Good ole Rod Powell, eh? What nobody knows is Ronnie Carpenter’s arranged to sell the bungalow and the land, provisional-like, to Percy Pierce for his son Lyndon, who’d just qualified as a chartered accountant.’

‘You’re saying they only got to build that piece of pseudo-Beverly Hills crap because of a dirty deal between Rod Powell and Percy Pierce?’

Gomer dropped his last millimetre of ciggy onto the tomb, crushed it out and reminded Jane how people had always quietly helped each other in the country. And Rod Powell was dead now and Percy Pierce had retired to Weston-super-Mare, and now his boy had his seat on the council.

Was Lyndon Pierce really going to abandon a family tradition of being bent?

‘So is it possible Pierce is tied up with this guy Murray, who owns the meadow?’ Jane asked.

Not that it would matter. No need for corruption when you had council planning guys who thought appalling desecration was acceptable infill.

‘Not many folk he en’t in bed with, truth be told,’ Gomer said. ‘Accountant by profession, specializin’ in smoothin’ things out between farmers and landowners and the ole taxman. Local accountant who’s also on the council? Popular boy, Janey. Popular boy.’

‘A boy who used to shoot blue tits off a nut dispenser?’

Jane looked up at the church steeple, a sepia silhouette against a clump of cloud like dirty washing. Was this the Herefordshire of Alfred Watkins, who led genteel parties of gentlemen in panama hats and ladies with sunshades to explore ancient alignments of stones and mounds and moats and steeples? Was this the Herefordshire of the mystical poet Thomas Traherne, who was clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars?

She hugged herself, wishing she could be back in Eirion’s bed – and then wondering if she ever would be again.

‘Makes you sick,’ she said.

‘Ar, it do,’ Gomer said. ‘Evenin’, Lol, boy, ow’re you?’

Jane turned to see Lol, in one of his alien sweatshirts, leaning against the lych-gate and shaking his head.

‘You know how I hate to interfere, Jane,’ Lol said in his mild, tentative way, ‘but is it possible you’re avoiding your mum?’

‘Lol, she’s been busy. She’s out all the time.’

‘A situation you might just be … you know … exploiting?’

‘Not true at all. What I’m doing is, I’m actually trying to protect her, OK? She has a position in this village, obviously, and, like, how often have I done anything … OK, anything locally … that could cause her embarrassment? OK, don’t answer that, but listen … this is what Lucy would want.’

Jane looked at Lol and then at Gomer, hoping they would both understand this.

Not that it mattered. She could almost see Lucy Devenish rising above the lych-gate, the darkening sky woven into the shadowed folds of her poncho.

21 Playing Purgatory

Winnie Sparke looked past Merrily, out through the porch door into the waxy evening. Her white shawl was hanging loose like a priest’s stole.

‘You really shook things up in there, lady.’

‘Wasn’t me. I think something was just waiting to blow. You can’t just sit on something like this.’

Winnie Sparke walked out into the night, Merrily following her.

‘I don’t suppose you know where Mr Loste is?’

‘He isn’t here.’

‘I’d gathered that. But I would like to talk to him.’

‘Maybe I could fix that. It’s possible. Leave it with me.’

‘With you?’

‘Tim is … kinda fragile. Like a lot of people with huge talent, he needs someone to hold him together. Oops, mind you don’t—’

‘Oh my God, what’s—?’

It had risen up like a column of smoke in the dusk, its eye sockets black, its mouth hanging open and the wings half-extended behind its arms. Its shoulders were black against a slash of red in the sky like the bar of a burning cross. Hands reaching up, palms outwards as if they were awaiting nails.

‘Kinda weird, huh?’ Winnie Sparke said. ‘They say kids from the Royal Oak come in here and make out on the graves. But, hey, not on this one.’

The angel was standing on a tomb the size of a double-oven Aga, the lettering on the side big enough to read even in the ebbing light.

JOSEPH LONGWORTH, 1859 – 1937

‘All holy angels pray for him

Choirs of the righteous pray for him.’

‘Guy who built the church,’ Winnie Sparke said. ‘Found God and Elgar, not necessarily in that order.’

‘I’m trying to place the quote.’

‘You’re excused. It’s Roman Catholic. Newman – The Dream of Gerontius.’

‘I was listening to it on the way here.’

While she’d been trying to engage Elgar in conversation, an exasperated Sophie had gone out and bought her three CDs. Next to the spare and moody Cello Concerto, the fifty minutes of Gerontius that she’d heard seemed both complex and a little dreary, heavy on the deathbed angst.

‘Scary stuff,’ Winnie Sparke said. ‘All those layers of celestial bureaucracy. OK, you know how after the soul comes round on the Other Side, he gets a pep talk from his guardian angel and then these demons start messing with him? Then he gets just one tantalizing glimpse of God?’

‘I’m not sure I got that far.’

‘OK, well, between the demons and God he gets handed over to this guy.’ Winnie Sparke reached up and tapped the arm of the grotesque figure on the tomb. ‘The Angel of the Agony.’

‘I don’t know anything about him.’

Merrily looked up into the wretched marble face, grateful, on the whole, that there was nothing like this in Ledwardine churchyard.

‘His job is to plead with Jesus to spare the soul of Gerontius,’ Winnie Sparke said. ‘It’s a judgement thing. But you know what I think? I’m like, the hell with this guy, I think we can deal with purgatory right here.’

‘In Wychehill?’

‘On Earth, I meant. But Wychehill … yeah, sure. Wychehill’s as good, or maybe as bad a place as any for throwing off your demons. Maybe we can discuss this sometime.’ She flicked her shawl over a shoulder. ‘You’re gonna come back, now you won through?’

Merrily shrugged.

She lit a cigarette under the church lantern, one of its glass panes spider-cracked as if by a thrown stone or an air gun pellet. If Bliss was picking her up, she didn’t want to go back in there and get pulled into a discussion. Besides, if a requiem was going to be held, Syd Spicer would need to make the arrangements.

There was a mauve, last-light glaze on the road, a faintly rank smell. She kicked what appeared to be a shrivelled condom into the side of the wall. Obtained from a vending machine at Inn Ya Face?

‘Smoker, eh?’

She jumped.

Preston Devereaux was leaning on the wall under one of the oak trees. He, too, had a cigarette.

‘Congratulations, Mrs Watkins.’

‘I’m sorry. I was just … a bit…’

‘You were bloody furious. A woman scorned.’

‘I’m sorry. You’ve had a pretty bad week, too.’

‘Had better.’

‘How are you feeling now?’

‘Me?’ Devereaux leaned back against the wall, scratched his jaw. ‘Well, since you ask, last night I got drunk. Today, I sold the offending Land Rover for peanuts. Couldn’t stand to see it any more. I’m OK. Something happens, you live with it, move on. You don’t pick at it, like a townie.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Sorry if I’m causing offence again. I assumed you were local, name like Watkins.’

‘Local origins. I’ve moved around.’

‘Well, me too. But we came back, didn’t we? God help us.’

‘I hoped I’d be able to talk to you before the meeting,’ Merrily said. ‘But I think you answered my questions back there, anyway.’

‘You were really going to ask me that? If I’d seen the ghost of Sir Edward Elgar on his bike before the crash? Good God.’

Merrily shrugged. ‘My job.’

‘Well, if you get to know me better you’ll know it’s not in my nature to make excuses or throw the blame at anyone living or dead. I was tired. Had a long drive, wanted to get home. Perhaps, if I hadn’t been so tired, I’d’ve reacted quicker and there’d be two fewer funerals in Worcester. Who knows?’

‘If you’d been less tired, you might have been going faster and the result would have been the same. Only you’d probably have been seriously injured.’

‘I really don’t know.’ Devereaux shook his head slowly. ‘But what I won’t do, Mrs Watkins, is associate myself with the clowns who say this road’s haunted. So if that’s your idea of a cover-up, I’m sorry.’

‘Clowns?’

‘I don’t know what’s happening to places like this. At one time, we absorbed things. We, the community. Communities closed ranks, healed themselves. Scabs formed that eventually dropped off. Kind of people you got here now, the townies, they just got to keep picking and picking at it.’

‘What about the Royal Oak?’

‘The Royal Oak?’ He snorted. ‘Problem at the moment, but it won’t last. They never do, these places. We just got to sit it out. Make a fuss, you just give them more notoriety, and they love that. Look, I’m more sorry than I can say about what happened to those two kids. I was a wild boy, too, drove too fast, inhaled my share of blow. Not for me to take a moralistic stance. But, this all-encompassing fear of the Royal Oak … live with it, is what I say. Nobody can seem to live with anything any more.’

‘Well, yeah, everybody expects a perfect life. But it’s been suggested that a lot of Class A drugs pass through the Royal Oak. I don’t know if that’s right, but that’s what they say.’

Devereaux stared at her. ‘Do they? Who?’

Merrily didn’t know how to reply, never entirely happy about being Bliss’s snout, even if it was a two-way street.

‘Aye, well, they’re probably right, Mrs Watkins. And that’s not good. But it’ll pass. Be surprised if that place hasn’t changed hands again by this time next year. Raji Khan’s a businessman. When it goes off the boil he’ll get rid.’

‘You know him?’

‘Stayed with me when he was looking over the Oak. Stayed in one of my lovely holiday lets. Clever man, young Mr Khan. Knows how to surf the economic tides.’

‘You mean Mr Holliday was right about tourism grants to bring ethnic groups into the sticks?’

‘It’s the way this government operates.’ Devereaux took a long pull on his cigarette, holding it between forefinger and thumb. ‘But you know what makes me, laugh, Merrily – you don’t mind if I call you that … ?’

‘Not at all.’

‘What makes me laugh, my dear, is the way middle-class white folks move here from the harmless, peaceful suburbs, saying how glad they are to get away from the big, bad city, with all the drugs and the crime. Truth is, that was an imagined situation fuelled by Crimewatch and the Daily Mail. They’d never actually seen any of it…’

He laughed, at length, the cigarette cupped in his hand.

‘And now here’s the so-called ghost of Edward Elgar – poor dysfunctional bugger he was – and half of them think he’s a traffic hazard and half of them think he’s on their side against Raji Khan. What can you do with people like that? Hello—’

A young man in a rugby shirt was edging round the church gate. He stood in front of Devereaux and did a theatrical salute.

‘They’ll be out in approximately five minutes, sir.’

‘Good lad.’ Devereaux turned to Merrily. ‘My younger boy, Hugo. Took the precaution of stationing him in the vestry, out of sight. What’s the verdict, son?’

Hugo shrugged. ‘No problems, really. Well, that Stella got a bit hysterical, but they talked her down. I think they’re going for what Mrs Watkins suggested.’

‘Which is what? I’d left by then.’

‘Well, I’m not really…’

Hugo was about nineteen, lean like his dad, gelled dark hair and an earring. He looked at Merrily.

‘Mr Devereaux,’ she said, ‘are you saying you had a spy in the vestry all the time?’

‘Dad’s the worst kind of control freak,’ Hugo said.

‘Local intelligence is very important,’ Devereaux said. ‘You live in a village, Merrily, you know what it’s like. They weren’t going to say much with me there, were they? Too official.’ He smiled. ‘No, I exaggerate. Hugo was at the back already, doing the lights.’

He put out his cigarette in a fizzing of sparks against the church wall.

‘Tell me what you’re proposing,’ he said.

‘Well … it’s a requiem service in the church. A holy communion for the dead. So that would be a service for the two people who … died in the accident.’

‘Why them?’

‘Because they’re dead. It’s a big thing, death, but funerals today are often cursory and don’t bring … don’t always bring down the curtain. Don’t bring peace, or even the promise of peace, for the living.’

‘And how would this service achieve that?’

‘Mr Devereaux, we could sit down and I could give you the theology in depth and take up the rest of your night. Let’s just say that it does.’

‘You’re very confident.’

‘I’m not confident at all. That is, it’s not self-confidence, it’s…’

She raised her gaze to the darkening sky. Preston Devereaux laughed.

‘Well … who am I to argue with that? All right, then, go ahead. It’s your show now. This is just a straightforward service, I take it?’

‘Inasmuch as any service is straightforward.’

‘What I mean is, you wouldn’t be conducting what the press could call an exorcism?’

‘You’re right, I wouldn’t.’

‘Because none of us wants silly publicity, and if you can deal with it for us in a discreet and dignified fashion we’d be most grateful to you. Discuss it with the Rector, I should. I think you’ll find he agrees.’

‘Really.’

‘Nice to talk, Merrily. Goodnight to you.’

Preston Devereaux clapped a hand on his son’s back and they walked away to a dark 4x4 parked in front of Merrily’s Volvo. She watched them go, feeling faintly sick. A bat sailed in front of the church lamp like a blown leaf.

Deal with it for us. Coming out of the church she’d felt halfway in control again, now she was a puppet with strings so tangled you couldn’t tell who was pulling them. Merrily heard the voices of the villagers emerging from the church and walked rapidly away along the roadside towards the vicarage.

A car pulled alongside.

‘You all right, Merrily?’

Bliss’s face at the car window. She’d actually forgotten all about Bliss and his incident. She pulled back in mid-stride.

‘Is this going to improve my night, Frannie?’

‘Quite honestly,’ Bliss said, ‘I’d say probably not.’

22 Power of Place

Merrily jerked her head away. ‘Oh God…’

The DC, who was called Henry, pulled back his lamp.

‘You could’ve waited over by the truck,’ Bliss said. ‘I did warn you.’

And maybe she would have hung back, but a call a few minutes ago from Lol to say that he’d found Jane had fortified her, made her feel obliged to go across to join Bliss and what lay, in its abattoir splatter, across the jutting shelf of stone.

Bliss had driven up to the car park opposite the Malvern Hills Hotel at the foot of the Beacon, where they’d got into Henry’s police 4x4. A roundabout route along dirt tracks had taken them to the other side of the hill, Henry parking in some woodland before leading them by lamplight, like a shepherd, along an uphill mud footpath.

It had brought them to a wide-mouthed cave in a wall of rocks, like a black gable under a roof. Two uniformed policemen were in the opening, smoking cigarettes. Incident room, Bliss had said, and laughed.

Merrily swallowed. Being sick wouldn’t help the forensics.

‘Frannie?’

‘Uh?’

‘You think there’s a chance he did this to himself?’

The Home Office pathologist, Dr McEwen, looked at Bliss, probably to check that it was OK to speak in front of the woman in the dog collar. Bliss nodded.

‘I’d say the chances that your man did this to himself are fairly remote.’ McEwen was a soft-voiced Irishman in a red and blue baseball cap. ‘With a suicide – if we assume this is something the individual has never attempted before – he’s usually unsure of the best place to go in, so you’ll normally find two or three test cuts above and below the main wound. Now, if you see here…’

This time Merrily didn’t look, turning away towards the few lights of somewhere in Worcestershire laid out like a broken necklace under the ochre-streaked charcoal sky.

‘But there is more than one cut.’ Bliss’s fluorescent orange hiking jacket creaking as he bent down.

‘Sure, but they’re not what anybody would call test cuts,’ McEwen said. ‘This one here looks like knife-skid, but this one, arguably a secondary slash, is far too deep. See what it’s done to the trachea and the muscle there? There’s also a wound on the back of the head, which might … Look, give me a few minutes more, all right?’

‘Are these wounds consistent with that knife?’

‘Back of the head, though, that looks more like your blunt instrument. I haven’t seen the knife – you got it there?’

‘Bagged up,’ Bliss said. ‘Kitchen knife, eight-inch blade. Found in the grass not far from his right hand.’

‘Assume he didn’t do it to himself. And I’d guess you’re looking for more than one person, Francis. Probably more than two. If it happened here, which is how it looks by the blood-spatter, then … a muscular young feller like this, he’d take some holding down, wouldn’t he?’

‘Maybe somebody else holding his head back by the hair over the top of the stone to expose his throat for the knife. Henry, what did you say about this stone?’

‘Known locally as the Sacrificial Stone, boss. That’s all I can tell you.’

‘There you go, Merrily. Can’t say fairer than that.’ Bliss took her arm and led her away, back up towards the cave. ‘And this is Midsummer’s Eve, right? Talk me through this.’

‘Through what?’

‘Ritual sacrifice. Just to get me started.’

‘That’s why you wanted me to come up with you?’

‘No doubt we’ll find a proper expert tomorrow, if we need one. But as you’re here … fair to say your personal experience extends to aspects of pagan worship?’

Merrily glanced back at the stone, a steep wedge in the hillside, the dead man, with his black bib of gore, arching back over it like he’d been been using it for working out, about to perform some dynamic form of sit-up.

‘Frannie…’ She dug both hands hard into her jacket pockets, turned away to where the path wound around to the earthen ramparts of the Iron Age fort. ‘It doesn’t happen, does it?’

‘What doesn’t?’

‘Ritual sacrifice.’

‘Yes, it does,’ Bliss said. ‘You think of that poor kiddie found in the Thames a few years back.’

‘Yes, but that wasn’t—’

‘One of ours? Tut, tut. This is multicultural Britain, Merrily. Suggesting that the only valid form of ritual sacrifice in this country should be conducted by white men in white robes with sickles is tantamount to—’

‘Oh, I see. Because this guy’s black—’

‘A black man found with his throat cut at a famous Ancient British monument … that’s slightly cross- cultural, isn’t it? I don’t think it’s anything like that, but we need to eliminate it. Tell me about Midsummer’s Eve.’

‘Most traditional forms of paganism would focus on the solstice sunrise. Which is still a few hours away. But it’s stupid anyway … modern pagans just don’t do this kind of thing.’

‘Never say that, girl. There’s always some bastard who’ll do anything. But I take your point.’

‘Also … I mean, how long’s he been dead?’

‘Few hours, max. Found by some kids. Teenagers.’

‘So he was probably killed before dark. Still be a few walkers about. They’re going to stage a sacrificial ritual with the constant risk of an audience?’

A burst of light made Merrily turn in time to catch the second contained flash from a crime-scene camera, bringing the horror luridly alive: the obscene hole in the victim’s throat like parted lips with a protruding tongue. She thought of hostages in Iraq dying on video, heard the keening of the knife in the air, saw the blade shining red-golden in the sunset. A slash, a spurting, a choked-off scream. She shivered.

‘You’re doing well,’ Bliss said. ‘This is what I wanted to hear.’

‘Huh?’

‘Look, if you need a cig, go ahead, just don’t drop the stub.’

‘I’m OK.’

‘You don’t look it. I’m sorry, Merrily, I didn’t think. I do tend to use people, me.’

‘Really? I’ve never noticed that side of you.’

Bliss grinned. Headlights washed across the sloping trees below them. The turf under Merrily’s feet felt as springy as an exercise mat. With the smoky hills snaking away before her, it was like standing on some kind of natural escalator. Power of place.

‘It’s an execution, isn’t it?’

‘Possibly,’ Bliss said. ‘Of sorts.’

‘And you’re thinking the victim’s connected with the Royal Oak.’

‘A good detective is open to all possibilities.’

‘Only…’ She hesitated. ‘… A guy in the parish meeting just now was insisting that the licensing authority had been tolerating what was happening at the Royal Oak because you got better tourism grants if you could show the government you were encouraging black and Asian visitors.’

‘Must send the council a picture. This could be worth thousands.’

‘So I was wondering…’

‘A racist execution?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You know what I think, Merrily? I think if this lad had been found with the same injuries behind one of the garages on the Plascarreg Estate we wouldn’t be asking ourselves any of these questions.’

‘Power of place,’ Merrily said.

It was another ninety minutes or so before they went back to the British Camp car park. Bliss had offered to get Henry to take Merrily back to her car at Wychehill, but she’d hung on, watching the police tape going up, lights bobbing around the hillside.

Bliss had wandered off to consult with his team and Merrily had phoned Lol, asking him to get a message to Jane: don’t wait up.

‘Henry says people come up here for the Midsummer sunrise,’ Bliss said as they climbed down from the 4×4. ‘In which case they’ll be disappointed tomorr—’ He looked at his watch. ‘Dear me, it is tomorrow. Anyway, I don’t want any bugger on that hill until we’ve been over it in daylight.’

‘How long are you staying?’

‘I’ll drive you to your car and then I’ll come back for an hour or two. See if I can make enough progress to stake a claim.’

‘On the case?’

‘Soon as Howe gets in tomorrow, she’ll be working out how to remove me from the investigation. Being so close to the Worcester border doesn’t help.’ Bliss unlocked his car. ‘Don’t want to be too tired to put up a decent resistance.’

He drove past the side of the Malvern Hills Hotel and into the road that led back to Wychehill.

‘However,’ he said, ‘if I did want to keep going until sunrise, and probably the sunrise after that, the answer would be in the knapsack that one of the lads has found among the rocks. Up by the Giant’s Cave, as it’s known.’

‘A knapsack … full of … ?’

‘In very saleable quantities. We’ll know for certain in the morning if it belonged to our friend.’

‘He was a dealer?’

‘Not for me to defame the dead without forensic evidence, but … yeh.’

‘He was dealing on Herefordshire Beacon?’

‘Oh heavens! A purveyor of narcotic substances on a national monument. Merrily, imagine for a moment, if you’re a Malvern professional person throwing a dinner party, how much more civilized it would be to stock up on the After Eights on a balmy summer evening with all-round views.’

‘Luckily I’m a vicar who can’t afford to throw dinner parties. Bloody hell, Frannie.’

‘But what puzzles me is who would brutally unthroat a drug dealer … and then not even nick his flamin’ stash?’ Bliss cruised down the hill past the darkened Royal Oak in its tree-lined quarry. ‘I’m norra great believer in coincidence, Merrily.’

‘Look … what can I tell you? I’ve been to a public meeting where the community had to decide what it wanted me to do about the ghost of … of a cyclist. If anything in that connects with an appallingly nasty murder of a drug dealer on the lower slopes of Hereford-shire Beacon it isn’t obvious to me. But then, it is late.’

‘But you’ll be coming back, I take it.’

‘I suppose.’

‘And I might not be. So keep me informed.’

‘And you keep me informed.’

In the north-eastern sky, she could see amber strips. Probably a false dawn. Midsummer morning in Elgar’s England.

‘Not only did they not take his drugs,’ Bliss said, ‘they didn’t even nick his mobile. Work that out.’