The Smile of a Ghost

24 Ancient Incense

MERRILY FELT VERY small and exposed.

She was wearing jeans and a green fleece with a torn pocket. She had a canvas shoulder bag with her cigarettes inside and her phone. Around her neck was a chain with a tiny gold cross on it that was hidden by the neck of her grey T-shirt.

Demob-disorientated in an old town like a pop-up book, coming at her from all angles in wedges of carrot-coloured antique brick and twisted timbers and thrusting gables.

Cars and trucks laboured up Corve Street and down Old Street, or were funnelled, squealing like pigs, into the Bull Ring and King Street which must have been designed for donkey carts. And the sun slithered overhead like a soft-boiled egg trailing clouds of bloodied membrane. Or that was how it looked, through the rose-tinted glasses.

And she felt very small, especially next to Jon Scole of Ghostours.

‘Drinks,’ he said. ‘Right. OK… OK… I’ve got to think about this. Which one of these tarted-up piss-parlours threw me out last?’

Ethereal he wasn’t. He wore a motorbike jacket with extraneous chains. He seemed about seven feet tall, and he had long hair and a beard and a Manchester accent that could split logs. He winked at Merrily, tossed back his blond ringlets.

‘Only kidding, Mary. They love me, really. I bring ’em customers they’d never see as a rule: old ladies who want coffee, or a bitter lemon if they’re feeling daring – soft drinks and beverages, that’s where the real money is. ’Sides, you need a clear head for ghosts, I should know. OK, the Feathers it is, then. Top place. You did say the Feathers, didn’t you? They always do.’

‘I didn’t say a word,’ Merrily said.

‘Hey, you thought it, though? Nobody can resist going in the Feathers at least once. Hang on…’ He lifted a finger as if he was testing the wind direction. ‘Now. Right. Feathers Hotel… OK! Now, we don’t normally get to this until last ’cos it’s not what you’d call typical. As ghost stories go, it’s a bit off the wall, but still…’

He led her across the road, weaving through the traffic, drivers letting him through: Jon Scole looked like he could damage small cars. He stopped at the opposite kerb, gazing up at the ornate Jacobean fantasy that looked as if it had been sculpted out of Cadbury’s chocolate flakes and marzipan. The last time she’d seen the Feathers Hotel was on Robbie Walsh’s computer.

‘I mean, classic haunted inn, right? What would you reckon, Mary: a highwayman in a black mask? No… well, maybe, I dunno… but the most interesting phenomenon in this particular location is – get this – young girl in a miniskirt and a see-through blouse.’

‘Really?’

‘Fact. Usual time, about now – no, later, around noon. Comes sashaying straight across where we just come… right through cars… fades through the bloody cars and out the other side… up onto this very pavement, and then – poof! Vanishes! Seen, not once, but about a dozen times, back in the 1970s when I were still learning to walk. Go in there, luv, ask the staff. Come on, I’ll prove it to you.’

‘No… Jon… I’d rather not ask anyone. I don’t want to—’

‘Sorry!’ He put up his hands, as though the spectral girl had just glided out of the Telecom van parked up on the kerb with its hazard warning lights on. ‘Got you. You don’t wanna make a thing of it. I’m with you. Let’s just go in, grab a drink.’

At a round table in the Comus Bar of the Feathers, she made like the old ladies and asked for tea. Jon Scole grinned at her through his curly copper-wire beard.

‘Vicars and tea, eh? Sorry! Just can’t get over you being a… you look so little and…’ He puffed his lips out. ‘Sorry, I’m a bit direct, me.’

‘No, that’s— It’s always nice to know where you are with people. Makes quite a change. But if you could just, like’ – Merrily patted the air – ‘reduce the volume?’

‘Right, OK.’ He brought down his boom to a loud whisper. ‘And that’s the last time I’ll mention religion in public, swear to God. Don’t worry about the folk you get in here, though – unless it’s Rotary day, it’s guaranteed to be mostly tourists.’

‘Why’s it called the Comus Bar?’

‘Milton’s play, Comus – first performance 1634 at Ludlow Castle. Little Robbie Walsh told me that, God rest his soul. Everywhere you go, this town, you’re wading through ’ist’ry. Come in off the street, you got to scrape it off your shoes like dogshit.’

He took off his motorbike jacket, hung it over the back of his chair. Underneath, he wore a leather waistcoat. He pulled it straight.

‘Used to wear a watch and chain, then word reached me Councillor Lackland thought I were taking the piss. Didn’t want to offend dear old George. He could make things very difficult for me, could George – all the official buildings I need to take people through. And the shops – George runs the Chamber of Trade. He could wipe me out in a month, no shit.’ A gap appeared at the bar; Jon Scole stood up. ‘Pot of tea, please, Ruth, and a pint of the good stuff.’ He sat down. ‘So, Mary… you want to meet Bell, eh? Tough one, that. Not impossible, but certainly tough.’

It was George Lackland who’d set this up.

The Bishop had talked to George on the phone from the Deliverance office early this morning, setting the ball rolling. Perhaps whatever she turned up could be filtered through Sophie during office hours, Bernie said. Best if they were not seen to be collaborating, although she was welcome to ring him at home at night. Merrily didn’t imagine it would make much difference now. There were times when you felt it was all out of your hands, a Will of God situation. She’d never actively sought out the deliverance role, so if it was taken away… what right did she have to feel furious, embittered, isolated, stabbed in the back?

‘You all right, Mary?’ Jon Scole said.

‘Yes… sorry…’

‘You looked like you suddenly wanted to kill somebody.’

‘No, it was just…’ She felt the blush. ‘Had a late night.’

This morning, she’d sat in the office and listened to Bernie giving George Lackland the spiel, Important Man to Important Man: George, we have to work this out between us, you and I, and I think our priority is essentially the same – that is, preserving the spirit of the finest, most precious little town in the country. But if we’re tampering with heritage, George, we have to tread softly. I’ll be frank, what I’ve said to Merrily is this: go into Ludlow, talk to people, take the spiritual temperature, come back to me and we’ll make some sort of decision. Sooner rather than later, I promise.

Not spelling anything out. Never once mentioning Belladonna.

And then George had been talking for a while and Bernie had been nodding and glancing at Merrily and giving her small, confidential smiles, finally telling George that of course he understood. We decoded your messages, old friend. We’ll keep your confidence, and you’ll keep ours?

The parish details had all been arranged surprisingly easily. Merrily and Sophie had fixed up for Dennis Beckett, retired minister, go-anywhere locum, to take on the Ledwardine church services for the next two weekends and handle any routine parish business that came up. Merrily would still be at home at nights, but she’d leave the answering machine on the whole time, directing any calls on urgent parish business across the county to Dennis. She’d tell Uncle Ted, senior churchwarden, tonight. He wouldn’t be happy, having to work with Dennis at such short notice, but when had Uncle Ted ever been happy since she’d taken on Deliverance?

As for Siân Callaghan-Clarke and the Panel, Sophie had already dealt with that. Sophie accepted that part of her role was laundering clergy lies; she’d told Siân that Merrily’s favourite aunt – not her mother, who could easily be traced – had fractured a hip and, as Merrily had holidays owing… Where was this? Sophie wasn’t entirely sure, but somewhere not too far away, as Merrily would be coming home some nights, when another relative took over – Sophie making it complicated enough to forestall questions.

Then George Lackland himself had phoned Merrily, telling her he’d arranged for her to meet Mr Jonathan Scole. A volatile young man, but he could give her information that it wouldn’t be right for George himself to come out with. And, because of what Jonathan did, he’d spent some considerable time in the company of a certain person, George said.

Now, the only problem here is that I might have to tell him who you are and what you do. I have every reason to think he’ll keep it absolutely confidential. Every reason. My wife works a good deal in tourism and Jonathan’s business depends on a certain amount of goodwill, if you understand me. No, he’s a good lad, really, he’s kept us well informed about matters that might have proved embarrassing. Top and bottom of it is, I think he’ll be quite thrilled to work with someone like you… Now then, is that all right for you?

Well…

You tell him what you want him to know and what he’s to keep to himself, and you tell him he’s got me to answer to if he don’t. Not that that’ll be necessary.

The mood swings of last night had no longer been in evidence. George Lackland had a town to run, and it had been like talking to some avuncular Mafia don whose ethos had long since transcended all moral values.

‘So I’m in your hands.’ Jon Scole sucked the top off his beer. ‘Whatever you want. And I might seem a bit of a loud-mouthed bastard, but I can promise you, Mary’ – Jon tapped his nose, froth on his beard – ‘nothing gets out.’

Mary? Well, why not? He knew she was a vicar with the diocese. But he didn’t know her surname, and now he’d got her first name wrong. Perhaps even George Lackland had heard it as Mary.

She was working undercover. She would be Mary. Fine.

She’d met up with Jon Scole at his shop in Corve Street. The shop was called Lodelowe, a medieval spelling of the town’s name. It was a darkly atmospheric gift emporium, with lamps made from pottery models of town houses, misty framed photographs, paintings and books: books on the history of Ludlow and books about the supernatural.

Jon Scole understood from the Mayor that, unlike some people in the Church he’d had dealings with, Mrs Watkins wasn’t averse to discussing ghosts, which had seemed to be the clincher for him. They could talk about ghosts. Jon loved to talk about ghosts. And also about the strange ways of the exotic Belladonna – Bell Pepper.

‘Oh yeah, I get on with Bell… as far as anybody does. Bell loves ghosts. I mean, that’s it. Mystery solved. I could lead you along, make a big thing out of it, but that’s what it comes down to. That woman bloody loves ghosts. And you know what’s so funny about that – I mean considering all those spooky albums? You know the big joke? Bell can’t see ’em. She cannot see ghosts.’

‘That’s what she’s said to you?’

‘I tell you’ – Jon pointed down the Comus bar, which was unexpectedly modern, not at all rustic – ‘if the bint in the see-through whatsit drifted through here now, she’d carry on with her gin and tonic, tequila, whatever— Oh, listen, I never finished that story, did I? That was a strange one. A bloke investigated it, found this actual young girl who, every week, she used to visit her auntie, or her great-auntie – anyway, they were close – and when the auntie died suddenly and the girl moved away, she used to imagine herself going back along the same route, reliving it – a happy time. And they reckon that’s what people saw.’

‘A phantasm of the living?’ Huw Owen called them extras or walk-ons.

‘Blimey, you do know your way around my backyard,’ Jon said. ‘I tell you, Mary, this town’s heaving with ghosts. I can do well here, if they leave me alone.’

‘You’ve not been doing this long?’

‘Came here not long before Bell. Parents died – got killed in the car.’

‘I’m sorry. Was it—?’

‘Bit of a shock. Year or so ago now. They had a restaurant – well, more of an upmarket transport caff, to be honest, south Man. – Cheshire, they liked to say. I couldn’t face taking it over, so I flogged the lot to the bloody Little Chef – opportune, really – and took to the road, looking for something interesting.’

‘So, you own the shop?’

‘No, I’m renting – ridiculous bloody rent – but it’s still at the experimental stage. This bloke Roy Liddle, who did the ghost-walks before, it was more of a hobby for him. I’m afraid I’m a little bit more of a businessman, don’t want to invest all I’ve got in it if it’s going to flop, do I?’

‘The ghost-walks?’

‘Ties in with the shop: mysteries of old Ludlow. Not doing badly, but it’s early days yet – I only opened last Christmas, still feeling me way. Can’t afford to tread on too many toes at this stage. So when the Mayor sent for me…’

‘Sent for you?’

‘Well… asked if I’d drop into his furniture shop – it’s only fifty yards up the road. You should’ve heard him. He’d been asked to assist “senior clergy” investigating “certain incidents”. Absolutely confidential, Jonathan. Me trying to keep a straight face. What is that about?’

‘It’s about what you might call the spiritual spin-off from two very similar deaths at the castle.’

‘One an accident. Unless…’

‘Mmm?’

‘Unless you and George know better?’ Little smile there.

‘Did George indicate that?’

‘Well…’ Jon Scole thought for a moment. ‘I should tell you – if he hasn’t already – that there’s a certain issue on which old George and me swap confidences.’

‘Belladonna?’

Jon grinned. ‘Bane of his life. Lovely lady – undermining every bloody thing he thinks he stands for: moral decency, all this stuff. And he can’t do anything, ’cos very soon she’s gonna be at the very heart of his eminently respectable family. Respectable! He’s an old crook, like all bloody councillors. You ever know a councillor who was in it for the public good?’

‘But why would he share confidences with—? I’m sorry…’

‘A yob like me? Because I mix with the kind of people who come into contact with Bell. And even Bell herself, now and then. Better placed than anybody, me, to keep an eye on her. I mean, I can see his problem – it must be scary having a woman like that around.’

‘A woman like what?’

‘A woman with enough money never to have to give a shit for people like Councillor Lackland. A woman who’s fascinated by the mysteries of life and death, and is open to… experiments.’

‘What kind of—?’

Jon tapped his nose. ‘All in good time, Mary. Tell me about yourself.’

‘Well…’ She’d spent some time working out what she wanted to say and what it was best to conceal. ‘I work for the Diocese of Hereford…’

‘You’re a real, actual priest.’

‘I… yeah.’

He frowned. ‘See, that’s not good, Mary. She doesn’t like priests, Bell. Likes churches but she doesn’t like The Church. If you get me.’

‘Mmm.’

‘So what’s The Church’s angle on this?’

‘Good question. All right… I work for the division of the Church that investigates hauntings and… things of that nature.’

‘That’s more or less what George said, but I wondered if he was having me on, so I said I’d talk to you. So you’re actually an exorcist, right?’

‘Well, I… yeah.’

‘You don’t look a lot like Max Von Whatsisname.’

‘I’m a disappointment to everyone.’

‘There isn’t some silly bugger wants you to go in and exorcize the castle, is there?’

‘Nothing formal, as yet.’

‘Because that…’ Jon was lifting his glass. He put it down with a bang. ‘That would be fuckin’ insane, Mary! Apart from what it’d do to my business, you’d be undermining the very essence of Ludlow. Bell would go spare.’

‘For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t like to do that either,’ Merrily said. ‘But I’m interested in why you think it would be insane.’

‘Really? All right. Come with me, then.’

‘Where?’

‘Not far.’ He stood up and put on his motorbike jacket. Its chains rattled like an alarm, and two retired-looking couples at the next table all turned round at once.

Jon Scole wiped his mouth and beard with the back of a hand. ‘You psychic yourself, Mary?’

‘No more than anybody.’

‘As long as you’re receptive, you’ll feel it. There’s some places with more resonance than others, especially in this town. Not sure why, but it’s fact. Physically, it’s got a lot to set it apart – built on a kind of promontory, two rivers, a very ancient church… and I mean very ancient. And, like, the whole atmosphere here, you can feel it… it’s rich and heavy, like it’s drenched in some ancient incense, you know what I’m saying?’

‘Actually, I do. Especially in the evening.’

‘You don’t need the evening.’

25 His Element

DOWN PAST TESCO’S, towards the bottom of Corve Street, yew trees overhung a high stone wall and they could see the roof of the chapel.

‘Dogs,’ Jon Scole said. ‘They reckon the dogs know.’

He had to shout over an old yellow furniture van clattering out of town. It had one word diagonally on the side: LACKLAND.

‘Dogs?’ Merrily said.

‘Dogs are supposed to go bonkers this end of the Street. Out of control. Well, I’ve seen it. Some old dear hauling on the lead: Brutus! Heel! No chance. Very strong atmosphere. Accumulation of psychic energy. So, anyway, this is where she walks.’

‘Sorry… who?’

‘Who do you think?’

Jon Scole led her through the gateway, where cars were parked next to a circle of youngish yews, gloomily wrestling for the light. The chapel was set back, regular and Victorian-looking like the chapels you found in cemeteries, which was what it appeared to have been.

There was an information board on a lectern. It told you that the chapel had been built partly on the site of a Carmelite friary dating back to 1349, in use until suppressed by Henry VIII in 1539 when its buildings were sold and demolished. And then came the cemetery.

‘No, don’t read it, Mary, come and see it.’

Jon Scole led her down past the chapel, which was some kind of print workshop now – and that was good, she thought, much better than dereliction, brought a flow of people down here, kept up a flow of energy.

Merrily blinked. Bloody hell, she was thinking like Jane.

But there was an energy in Ludlow, the kind you didn’t find in too many ancient towns, and even the rolling roof of Tesco’s was urging it in. The town was prosperous, sure, but not in any self-conscious way, and what Bernie Dunmore had said about the buildings being preserved in aspic was misleading. Nothing that she’d seen here was in aspic; it was all still in use, and it buzzed, and it hummed, and it chattered.

Even the graveyard. A path ran down the middle; Jon Scole was strolling along it, but Merrily had stopped. There were cemeteries and there were graveyards, and the thing about cemeteries was that most of them weren’t places you’d want to end up.

Jon Scole turned and came back. He was beaming.

‘Surprising, eh? When they ran out of room at St Laurence’s this was where they came. And then this one got full. There’s supposed to be fourteen hundred graves here.’

Very few of them were fully visible any more because someone had taken an inspired decision. The result was that St Leonard’s graveyard was vibrantly alive: a tangly, scuffling, mossy-green delirium, busy with birdsong, rich with moisture and slime. Merrily looked around, saw a fat, hollowed-out yew tree and two shiny, rippling domes of ivy that probably used to be headstones. In the summer, the air would be shimmering with butterflies, haunted at night by bats and moths.

‘They gave it back to nature,’ she said. ‘They just… let it go.’

‘What you got here, Mary, is part of a kind of secret passageway linking the oldest parts of town – and the two rivers. The Corve down at this end, which is this narrow, private kind of river, and the big one, the Teme, at the other.’

Between the trees, over the bushes and the rooftops, you could see the tower of St Laurence’s, as if this graveyard was still intimately linked to it. Which, in a way, it was. Merrily was enchanted. Not in some flimsy, poetic way; there was a real and powerful enchantment happening here.

Maybe it was a combination of the rose-coloured glasses and her own disconnection from the diocese: Jane’s pagan forces reaching out for her. Maybe this was just an overgrown graveyard.

‘We’re going the opposite way from the way she walks,’ Jon said, back on the path. ‘She comes up from The Weir House, up the steps and into The Linney, which goes from just above the Teme, up to the church and then starts again on the other side of the church and comes down again, and you wind up here. Magic.’

‘How often does she… walk?’

‘Whenever the mood takes her. No, that’s wrong, she probably follows some pattern. Late at night, or in the hour before dawn. Something’s got to be turning her on, though, hasn’t it?’

‘Meaning?’

‘Well… you know. There’s obviously a lot of places she finds a bit of a turn-on. That’s why she came here. Like I say, this is just a very haunted town, and it feels like it, know what I mean?’

‘It feels nice.’

‘It feels haunted, Mary. Everywhere you go. Look at all the stories… you got an old woman in a dressing gown in the churchyard, and heavy footsteps. You got Catherine of Aragon – allegedly – at the Castle Lodge. Summat shivery at The Reader’s House. You got haunted shops, a hairdresser’s with a poltergeist. And… look over there…’

A view had opened on the left, the kind of view that seemed like it was planned. Anywhere else, there’d have been a viewing point with a telescope that you could feed 10p coins into.

It was the castle, as she’d never seen it before. It was away on the other side of the town but, from here, it appeared to be nestling in lush greenery, the scene uninterrupted by modern buildings or, in fact, any buildings – as if you were viewing it along a wooded valley. As if you were back then, when there was only the castle.

‘Jon, it’s like this place – this cemetery – is linked with everywhere. You turn a corner and…’

‘Magic,’ Jon Scole said. ‘Everything in this town is connected up. Like electric wires. Like a circuit. If you know how, you can plug yourself in.’

‘Bell told you that?’

‘Just once. And then she shut up, like she were giving too much away. Links through time – all the sacred places interlinked, and there are special spots where all the… like the eras of time come together. When she walks here, it’s like… you know?’

‘Like she doesn’t walk alone? Or at least she feels…’

‘Feels, yeah. Doesn’t see nowt, but… I tell you, if I could get that woman into the ghost-walks, as a regular, I’d bloody clean up. As it is, I’m just taking it all in, I feel like I’m tapping into her consciousness.’

Merrily remembered Lol suggesting that inside Belladonna’s consciousness was not a safe place to be.

‘… Learned a lot about Bell,’ Jon was saying. ‘I mean, the music, that’s only half of it. This is a heavy lady, Mary.’ He paused, nodding his head. ‘’Course, she’s also halfway out of her fuckin’ tree.’

They went and stood under the dark, feathery awning of the yew, and she felt stupid with her glasses on, turning everything the colour of ripening plums.

‘Presumably,’ she said, ‘you’ve heard about the other things she’s supposed to have done. I mean, apart from walk.’

‘Naked!’ He laughed. ‘With a feller. Just over there, it was, apparently, where the ivy’s all thick on the ground. You’ve got to hand it to her, at her age. They must’ve been scratched to buggery.’

‘The Mayor was not amused.’

‘Well, what d’you expect? I mean, George Lackland… his generation… he’s not exactly a left-wing espouser of liberal values, is he? I mean, she was in rock music. They don’t operate according to George’s rules. They don’t live on the same planet.’

‘George lives on Planet Ludlow,’ Merrily said. ‘Isn’t that where Bell wants to be, too?’

‘She wants to be part of it, that’s true. But like, if she gets off on doing it in places where’ – making quote marks in the air with crooked fingers – ‘The Veil is Thin… I can connect with that. Sex produces a lot of psychic energy. And if there’s this vortex of energy there already, you probably get a top buzz. ’Least, you do if you’re Bell. You know what I mean?’

‘In a way.’

It was still a graveyard, though. Death-fixated erotomania was how Nigel Saltash might describe it. The yew tree was draped around them, exposing its insides. Ancient yews always looked like they’d been dead and come through it.

‘She’s built a career around an obsession,’ Jon Scole said. ‘If you’ve heard the music you’ll know that. She’s made a shitload of money, but she’s had a couple of brushes with the big D along the way, so she knows what a tightrope life is, even if you’re loaded. And she’s not getting any younger. So she’s not playing any more, and she doesn’t care what people think. She wants to know what she’s got coming.’

‘We all want to know,’ Merrily said. ‘Even the clergy.’

‘Yeah, but you got distractions. You got other things to do. This woman… she’s done the lot. Every way you can gratify yourself in this life, she’s done it. What’s left? Think about it.’

‘You sound as if you understand her.’

‘I try. I mean, she’s here… I’m here… there’s potential.’

‘But you said she was out of her tree?’

‘Halfway out of her tree.’

‘How would I get to meet her?’

‘You don’t meet her. She meets you… if she wants to. You can hang round here all night, and it’s like waiting for some rare creature – you might get lucky, you probably won’t. When she first came to live in Ludlow, reporters’d show up, full of themselves, and they’d all go back with nowt. Unless she wanted to talk. Which mostly she didn’t. Talked to the Journal ’cos that were the local paper. Wouldn’t even talk to the Star, ’cos it circulates outside.’

‘And that’s why local people protect her?’

‘That’s one of the reasons. She’s eccentric, Mary. This town likes eccentrics.’

‘George doesn’t. And a few others.’

‘No. Well…’

‘So if I wanted to meet her?’

‘You’d have to be someone she was interested in.’

‘Like Robbie Walsh?’

‘Let’s get back into the light, eh?’ Jon Scole said.

They stood inside the chapel gateway, near the information board, their backs to the surrounding wall and Corve Street. A young man came out of the print-shop with two carrier bags, smiled at Merrily.

‘Don’t believe a word this feller tells you. Most frightening thing you’ll ever see in Ludlow is him at closing time.’

‘Right…’ Jon Scole levelled a finger. ‘That order for four hundred Ghostours leaflets? Consider it bloody cancelled!’

He dropped his grin as the guy walked away. Turned to Merrily and shook his head.

‘What happened to Robbie, that were the worst thing of all. Great kid. Great to have around, you know? All that knowledge, he was like a wassername, prodigy. You’d see him wandering around, world of his own, and you’d go, All right, Robbie? You OK, mate? Be like he was coming down off something. Blink, blink – where am I?’

‘He used to go on the ghost-walk?’

‘Towards the end, he were practically a fixture. At first, he’d just tag along – well, I couldn’t charge him, could I? ’Sides, people liked him. He used to do half my job – knew everything about every building we came to. I didn’t, hadn’t been here long enough. Loved telling people about the past. In his element.’

‘He was interested in ghosts?’

‘Not so much the ghosts as the ’ist’ry. I did the ghosts, he did the ’ist’ry. We were quite a team, all through Easter. See… he could give you a picture. He was like a kid that’d just walked out of the Middle Ages. When he died, I were just fuckin’ gutted, Mary.’

Jon recalled the funeral – only right the service should be at St Laurence’s; even though he wasn’t local, he’d made himself local. Jon had waited to talk to old Mrs Mumford afterwards, telling her how much they’d all thought of Robbie.

‘Including Mrs Pepper?’

‘What do you think?’

‘So how did they meet?’

‘On the ghost-walk. Some nights, when it’s a bit quiet, she’ll just show up. Tag along. Tourists leave her alone; she’s a bit forbidding in that cloak. Anyway, one night – this’d be around last Christmas, when I was just getting the shop together – Robbie was there, and I were a bit knackered so I let him do most of it. He knew all the stories, better than me. And he just… little bugger brought it alive, standing there under a lantern on a stick. Especially the medieval stuff. He’d tell you what they were wearing, what the streets were like… the smells, even. Not in an academic way – he were still a young lad, no big words. But it was like the rest of us were in the here and now, and he was walking the same street, but he was in the twelfth century. You had to see it.’

‘He sounds remarkable. I hadn’t quite realized…’

‘I don’t wanna build him up too much, Mary, he were just a lad.’

‘And Bell…?’

‘Riveted, obviously. A young lad who seemed to be seeing things she couldn’t?’

‘What did you think about that?’

‘Me? I just thought he’d read a lot of books.’

‘And they became friends – Robbie and Bell?’

‘She made sure of that.’

‘Guy I spoke to said they seemed like… mother and son.’

‘They were mates.’ Jon looked irritated. ‘Let’s not get silly about it.’

‘Did you talk to him about her?’

‘Once or twice.’

‘And how did he relate to her… special interests?’

‘You mean was he exposed to Bell’s obsession with all things death? I don’t know. This copper asked me that. Detective. You know what they’re like, trying to make you say things.’

Mumford.

‘I mean, what is this, Mary? Is this some scheme of Lackland’s to get her out of his hair for good? Stitch her up for assisting Robbie to do himself in? Turn the whole town against her?’

Merrily stared at him. ‘What makes you think he did himself in?’

‘I dunno.’ Jon jammed his hands in the lowest pockets of his leather jacket, rattling chains. ‘It just never made a lot of sense to me that he’d just fall off. Kid knew his way around every passage in that castle with his eyes shut. And then that girl – not much doubt about that, is there? She came here to die.’

‘Did you ever have any reason to think Robbie was depressed about anything?’

‘No, he were full of life when he… I never thought, you know? He said things maybe I should’ve put together. Like, you’d ask him about his parents, and his face would cloud over. I was thinking maybe divorce, so I stopped asking. Didn’t wanna upset him. We just don’t know, do we, how to react for the best? What do you think?’

‘I think there are some questions that nobody’s been asking. And I think everybody’s been walking round Belladonna as if she’s the Queen.’

‘Mary, next to Bell, the Queen’s anybody’s.’ He looked at her, standing a bit too close. ‘She could be interested in you. I mean, you know your stuff, don’t you? It’s just… the priest thing. And an exorcist, even worse. Like Rentokil for ghosts.’

‘We’re not—’

‘I know you’re not. I’m telling you how she’d see you.’

‘Doesn’t mind being in the church, though.’

‘That’s because it’s where it is. It’s obvious the church is one of the places. Right at the top of the town, at the centre, where all the lanes and alleyways come out. View from the top of the tower – amazing. You should see that, makes the Hanging Tower look like jumping off a stepladder. You been there yet?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Blimey, you gotta see that. We could go there now. Ten minutes. You got time?’

Merrily looked at her watch. It was coming up to one p.m. She needed a break to think about all this, and she wanted to speak to Mumford. But more than any of this, she felt the need to break the spell.

‘All right, what are you doing around, say, four o’clock?’ Jon said. ‘Suppose I meet you at the entrance to the car park, near the castle?’

She nodded. She’d have to see it sometime. At least this guy would know the exact spot. Four p.m. would give her time to talk to Mumford and try to see the interior decorator who, according to George Lackland, had had some peculiar requests made of him by Mrs Pepper.

‘OK.’

‘Ace. Meanwhile – Bell. Let me think about this. I mean, I reckon she’d take to you as a person.’ Jon Scole grinned. ‘They say she goes both ways.’

‘Not with me she doesn’t, Jonathan.’

‘Just kidding, Mary.’

26 The Mix

THERE WAS THIS feeling of unease now, whenever Merrily thought about Andy Mumford. Wouldn’t have been too surprised to spot him back on the prowl here in Ludlow. She felt he was teetering like Jemima Pegler had, and perhaps Robbie Walsh, over a long drop.

But when she rang from the Volvo he was at home.

‘How’re you?’ His voice was still higher than usual; he would hate that – every time he spoke, a reminder of the kid with the chain.

‘I’m fine.’ She was in the car park at the top of town, close to the castle. The day had dulled, thin grey clouds windshielding the sun like smoked glass. She crumpled up the cellophane wrapping of her lunch, one free-range egg-and-cress sandwich. ‘You seen a doctor, Andy?’

‘No need. It’s better than it was.’

‘Doesn’t sound it.’

‘That’s because it hurts more.’ Mumford wheezed out a laugh. ‘Where you calling from?’

‘I’m back in Ludlow.’

‘That a fact.’

‘I’ve got a few days off.’ She could hardly tell him about the Bishop or George Lackland. ‘Vicar with a black eye doesn’t look good in the pulpit. And I thought that, with you being persona non grata here, maybe I could… check a few things out?’

‘Good of you.’

‘So I went to talk to Jonathan Scole.’

‘Boy tried to bullshit me.’

‘I think it’s his way. He does seem to have been fond of Robbie, however. Poor kid had a virtual season ticket on the ghost-walk in return for lecturing the punters on local history.’

‘What about the woman?’

‘She seems to have milked Robbie, too. If I ever get to see her, I’ll let you know.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Watkins,’ Mumford said. Paused. ‘Oh… I had a bit of information, too. From headquarters.’

‘You finally spoke to Bliss?’

‘No, no. Another person this was, in the Division. Distant relation. Second cousin to a second cousin, kind of thing. Gives me a call now and then, we chats about this and that.’

Family. In this part of the world, no matter how thinly a blood link was stretched, it was there to be rediscovered when necessary.

‘Seems Jason Mebus finally turned seventeen,’ Mumford said.

‘And you missed his party.’

‘They had his party below stairs at Hereford, attended by former colleagues of mine. Jason got into a confrontation at the Orchard Gardens last night – pub by the Plascarreg? Two boys finished up seriously hammered in the car park.’

‘By Jason?’

‘By four of them, but the others were juveniles. Jason’s charged with ABH. His first as an adult.’

‘He’s off the streets, then?’

‘That en’t gonner happen till he kills somebody. He was bailed. If the presiding magistrate’s in a real bad mood, he’ll get community service, the others’ll have a stern ticking-off. One of the others, by the way, was Chain-boy – Connor Boyd, his name.’

‘How do you know it’s him?’

‘Moron still had the chain.’

‘Ah.’ She watched a young couple loading babies and groceries into a people-carrier parked against the wall under the castle, where some siege engine might once have stood. ‘Andy, does this… relative know what they did to you?’

‘Said I had a throat infection. Another one of them’s Connor’s half-brother, Shane Nicklin, twelve. I reckon he was likely the little angel who came in to see us on his own. Regular at juvenile court. Shot a toddler in the eye with an airgun when he was seven.’

‘A good family, then.’

‘An example to us all,’ Mumford said.

‘I’m rather embarrassed about this,’ Callum Corey said. ‘You shouldn’t be putting me in this position.’

He looked about twenty-three and wore a white silk shirt. He stretched his legs out, swivelling sulkily from side to side in his leather chair. On the wall behind his desk were framed photo blow-ups of the restoration jobs Coreys had handled, and it was impressive: baronial interiors, open log fires.

‘It’s all word-of-mouth in our profession, Mrs Watkins,’ Mr Corey said. ‘Any gossip of this sort gets out, it can do us immense harm. My father thought he was doing old Lackland a favour – didn’t think he was going to blab it all over town.’

‘I don’t actually think,’ Merrily said, ‘that confiding it to a priest amounts to blabbing it all over town. Besides, he didn’t actually tell me what happened, he just suggested that I might have a word with you.’

‘You don’t look like a priest to me.’

‘What’s a priest look like?’

Mr Corey was the new type of ex-public-school painter and decorator, working out of this tasteful Georgian town house in Broad Street, which sloped to the old town gate and then to the river at the Horseshoe Weir where Mrs Mumford had drowned. The office was the size of a small ballroom, with blue-washed walls and four long Georgian windows. Trestle tables displayed leather-bound catalogues and samples of moulding and dressed stone.

‘OK.’ Merrily stood up. ‘I can see I’m putting you in a difficult position. I’ll go. Thank you for seeing me, Mr Corey.’

‘No, look—’ He came half out of his chair. ‘Wait… sit down. I just wondered… how the Church came into it. We… we’ve done some work for the Church.’

‘One word from me and all that would be over for good.’

He looked startled for a moment. Merrily smiled.

‘Joke, Mr Corey. OK, how do we come into it? Well… there’ve been incidents in St Laurence’s. We don’t like to involve the police if we can deal with these things ourselves. And I’d be grateful if this wasn’t blabbed all over town either.’

A glass-fronted cast-iron wood-burning stove was burning low, more for effect than heat at this time of year. Callum Corey pulled his chair away from it.

‘It wasn’t our job, originally. The Weir House was a project by the Raphaels – hit-and-run restorers. Move into a place, do it up, sell it, move on. Except in this case they virtually had to build from the foundations up. One of the old Palmers’ Guild houses. Look, please sit down. Would you like something to drink?’

‘Just had lunch, thanks.’ She sat down across the desk from him. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the Palmers’ Guild.’

‘Name’s now been appropriated by Mrs Pepper for a conservation trust she’s setting up. I’m afraid I’ll believe that when I see it. Originally, they were well-off pilgrims to the Holy Land in the Middle Ages. Brought a palm leaf back to prove it, something like that. That was how it started. Then they became a sort of cooperative movement that employed priests exclusively to pray for the immortal souls of their members. They became immensely wealthy and lasted for several centuries.’

‘Just in Ludlow?’

‘Began in Ludlow, spread over a wide area. Put huge amounts into the fabric of the church and financed the building of about fifty houses in the town. Including the ruin that the Raphaels renamed The Weir House.’

‘Mrs Pepper bought it off these Raphaels?’

‘Very quickly, apparently. There were still bits and pieces left to complete – but that’s always the case with these quick-bodge merchants. It’s all about appearances.’

‘So Mrs Pepper hired you to finish it off.’

‘Perfect it,’ Callum said. ‘There’s an impressive central room with an immense stone fireplace. One wall had been improperly finished and was miasmic.’

‘You mean it was damp?’

‘They’d used a gypsum mix on top of the stones but it hadn’t worked. What it needed was something more sympathetic.’

‘Like lime?’

‘Exactly.’ He looked surprised that she’d know.

‘I live in a four-hundred-year-old vicarage.’

‘Ah. We’re asked to renovate churches, but rarely touch vicarages and rectories still owned by the Church. They don’t seem prepared to spend too much money on dwelling houses.’

‘Unlike Mrs Pepper.’

‘Mrs Pepper didn’t quibble at all about the price. However, she had in mind certain… refinements of her own. Originally, horsehair was often mixed with the slaked lime. Did you know that?’

‘I’ve heard of it.’

‘Mrs Pepper had something similar in mind. But she wanted to use… her own hair.’

‘I see.’

‘I’m not sure you do, actually.’ Callum looked down at his unused blotter. ‘We do get a few odd requests of this nature sometimes – the craze for feng shui, fuelled by those dreadful TV make-over programmes. Some of the proposals contravene listed-building regulations, but we do what we can to satisfy the customer.’

‘So you went along with it.’

‘I did the work myself. She said too many people trampling around the place… that would not be acceptable.’

‘For reasons of privacy.’

‘I thought so, yes. I didn’t realize quite… Well, anyway, she presented me with a cardboard box with hair in it. Her own hair is blonde – whether it’s dyed or not, I’m not qualified to say. But this hair, um, wasn’t. It was darker and clearly of a different… consistency.’

‘It was someone else’s hair?’

Callum stood up and walked over to one of the long windows which overlooked not Broad Street but a small, flagged courtyard with a tall cedar tree at the bottom.

‘That wasn’t the impression I had,’ he said. ‘My impression, by the lack of length and the, er, texture of the hair was that it… hadn’t been taken from her head.’

‘Oh. And did you go ahead with the job? Did you mix it in?

‘Yes, I did.’

‘And was she happy with it?’

‘Er… very happy. She insisted on helping me. She got the plaster all over her hands. I did suggest she wear gloves, but she… seemed to want it on her skin. She then… at some point… she asked me if I would also like to add something of myself to the wall. As it were. I was quite wary by this time. I don’t really like working alone in houses where there’s only a woman at home.’

Merrily smiled. ‘I always thought you builders were men of the world.’

‘I am not a builder. Well, I am, but… This is a small town, and we’re a respected company, and my father’s a town councillor.’

‘You made an excuse and left?’

‘I did. Wasn’t just that she was old enough to be my mother, she… it wasn’t healthy.’

‘She lives there on her own?’

‘She has a cleaner and a gardener who come in. Seems to have most of her meals in restaurants in the town.’

‘That must be costly.’

‘Not a problem, it seems, for Mrs Pepper. The house is filled with… “antiques” would perhaps not be the word. There’s a sink, for instance, fashioned from what appears to be a stone coffin. They become available sometimes when old churches are converted into houses.’

‘So she had a wall plastered with hair… not from her head. Anything else she… wanted you to do?’

‘I’m not going to elaborate on what she invited me to add to the mix.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Quite,’ said Mr Corey.

27 Carrying a Light

IT WAS JUST after three p.m. when Merrily left Corey’s, walking, more or less aimlessly, up Broad Street, past de Grey’s café and then the clothing shop which Bernie Dunmore had told her had been retail premises since the fourteenth century.

She started imagining Robbie Walsh drifting this way, his self-educated inner vision replacing tarmac with cobbles, delivery vans with wooden carts, coats with cloaks, Levis with leggings. Ending the exercise when, without trying too hard, she was able to turn a man with a charity tin on the steps of the Buttercross into a leper in rags with a peeling face and wretched, burning eyes.

There’s some places with more resonance than others, Jon Scole had said. All it would take would be a moment of slippage, a mental stumbling, and she’d be seeing through Mrs Mumford’s eyes: dead Robbie shivering in sun-splashed glass.

She hurried away and didn’t look into shop windows.

There were times when you needed spiritual advice. Back in the car, she rang Huw Owen at his rectory in the Beacons, and, thank God, he was there.

‘How old is she, lass?’

‘Late forties, fifty, hard to say exactly; she’s wearing well.’

‘Been around?’

‘In every sense. She seems to have had a fairly nomadic existence, maybe not able to settle anywhere until she found this place.’

‘That would figure. Feels she’s come home at last. This is the place she should always have been. She has to make up for lost time.’

‘I think that’s exactly right. She’s bought a rebuilt medieval house on an old site. When a wall needs replastering, she gets the builder to mix in some of her own hair.’

‘Instead of horsehair.’

‘Exactly. Only, this is evidently pubic hair.’

‘Nice touch,’ Huw said.

‘What are we looking at here, then? Sympathetic magic?’

‘All magic’s sympathetic magic, lass. But this goes back to folk custom. When I were a lad, I remember an owd bloke saying that if you wanted to really make a house your own, you and the missus should make sure you use every room. “Use” being the operative word.’

‘That would figure, too, from what I hear.’

‘You’d probably also find that she’s drawn some of her own blood and mixed it with paint or varnish,’ Huw said. ‘Or she might use urine or… any other bodily fluids that come to hand.’

Merrily wrinkled her nose. ‘So it’s about belonging.’

‘Or, if she feels the house is haunted – say a presence from the past appears to be the dominant force there – then, by infusing her own essence into the fabric of the place, she’s making it clear who’s possessing who.’

‘You’re good, Huw.’

‘Ah, you know all this yourself, really, lass. This is just belt and braces.’

‘It’s what I need right now.’ She told him what Bernie Dunmore had suggested about Siân Callaghan-Clarke. ‘All rumour and conjecture, of course.’

His voice grew concerned. ‘So you’re really working privately for bloody Dunmore…’

‘Not as such. Just that we haven’t told anybody.’

‘Serving his agenda, though, not yours. I’d go home if I were you, Merrily. Keep your head down. Not the time for being a maverick. I’m not kidding. There’s summat here needs looking at. What’s that woman after? Why you?’

‘Dunno. I do, however, want to find out how Belladonna ties in – if she does – to the death of Robbie Walsh. And then I’ll back off. I’ve got your support, haven’t I? Counts for a lot, Huw. It’s kind of strengthening. Can I tell you the rest?’

‘There’s more?’

‘The house is only the beginning. She’s operating on a much wider scale. I think this is all about acceptance by the town itself, on all kinds of levels.’

She was already halfway to working this out. It was always fascinating to watch incomers and how they tried to get themselves accepted, grab a stake in the community – like, in Ledwardine, it was always the new people who organized the festivals, usually for the benefit of other newcomers. It drove Jane mad.

‘But of course Belladonna’s already famous, a bit notorious, and she doesn’t want to advertise her presence. Definitely doesn’t want to be a tourist attraction.’

‘But knows she’s a stranger,’ Huw said, ‘and that’s how people regard her – a newcomer… doesn’t fit and not entitled to. Has to earn her place.’

‘We know she’s already given a lot of money for conservation. Saved some land from possibly unsympathetic development.’

‘That’ll happen win her more friends than enemies – but some enemies.’

‘But I think that being accepted by the living people, Huw – that’s only a small part of what she wants, because… OK, this is what she does: she walks the streets alone at night, dressed in a long cape, burning candles. Following a specific route, it looks like, through the oldest parts of the town. Some people find it eerie, but they’ll accept it without too many questions, because…’

‘Poor folk are mental cases, rich folk are merely eccentric.’

‘Mmm. And then… here comes the sexual element again.’ She told him about St Leonard’s graveyard and what Jon Scole had said. ‘But that could be gossip.’

‘He could be right, though – fusing her own energies with the energies of the place. In the same way as witches’ll use sex at the culmination of a ritual at a sacred site – stone circle or whatever. Who was the partner?’

‘No idea.’

‘He should be local, for maximum benefit.’

‘Or she, apparently.’

‘Ah. Interesting. See, this is all very practical, Merrily. Your woman’s found the little town she wants to stay in for the rest of her life. If she’s carrying a light from her home, all the way around the town and back again, passing through the most ancient and holiest places, on a ritual basis – time and time again – she’s taking her spirit into that town, isn’t she?’

‘And becoming accepted by the spirit of the town? Or spirits…’

‘Which spirits?’

‘We know she’s been milking Jon Scole and anyone else for information about the best-established ghost stories – and there are quite a lot of them here, Victorian, Tudor, medieval… She wants to know who they are, and where they walk.’

‘Happen she sees the ghosts as the oldest permanent residents. Gain their acceptance and you’re in.’

‘There’s another thing, too… damn…’

‘Take your time. Put the mobile to your other ear for a bit, don’t want to fry your brains.’

‘No. Quite.’ She switched ears and leaned back in the driving seat, eyes closed. ‘Ah… I know… the church.’

‘It’s old and it’s big.’

‘And it has some famous misericords. On several occasions, Belladonna appears to have left a… tampon or a pad pushed down the side of one of them. This is blood again, isn’t it?’

‘Even better, this is menstrual blood. The deepest power of womanhood. Fertility on every level. A woman is at her most… fearsome, if you like… when she’s menstruating – as most fellers find out, to their cost. In the ancient world, you’d have a lot of ritual centred on menstruation – its connection with the moon.’

‘Ah,’ Merrily said.

‘But you knew that, anyway.’

‘You have a great ability, Huw, to make me aware of the significance of what I already might have known.’

‘Just be careful,’ Huw said. ‘Keep looking over your shoulder.’

‘Yes.’

There was still ten minutes to spare before Merrily was due to meet Jon Scole at the entrance to the car park. She walked back into Castle Square, where the historic buildings fell away and the timeless, grey-flecked sky opened up.

The castle gateway was guarded by a huge old cannon and a line of recently pollarded trees. There wasn’t time to go in now; she crossed the square towards the shops: Woolworths, the Castle Bookshop. She was looking in the bookshop window when worlds collided again.

There, on the fringe of a display of books on local history, was a large-format paperback with a red and white cover and heraldic symbols in each corner. In one of those moments of total awareness of everything around her, she went into the shop.

‘Could I… just have a copy of that book in the window: Everyday Life in the Middle Ages, in Pictures?’

She heard the bookseller saying that he thought it was the last copy, making a note to reorder some as she pulled out her purse.

Somebody had laid a wreath at the foot of the yew tree where they’d found Jemima Pegler. No name on it, no identifying card. Some of the pink and white flowers were already browning, petals picked off by the wind.

Merrily looked up into the denseness of the yew tree which was said to have grown on the spot where the body of Marion de la Bruyère had come to rest. The tree threw a circle of darkness. It was probably hundreds of years old, its leathery trunk knobbed and warted and suggestive, here and there, of twisted faces. Behind it was the dizzying sheerness of cliff… wall… tower… sky. About a dozen black window spaces had been punched in the tower walls, irregular, like holes in cheese.

‘This girl Jemima came out of one of them,’ Jon Scole said. ‘Didn’t look too bad, according to what people say. I’ll have to use her, eventually. She’ll become part of the myth. You think that’s tasteless?’

‘It’s what you do,’ Merrily said.

Walking down from The Linney – very steep, too narrow for cars, old houses on one side built up against the castle walls – he’d told Merrily about his efforts to get some kind of relationship going with Bell Pepper, whose Weir House was below them, hidden in the bristle of pines above the river.

Seeing the look on her face, he’d gone backing off, hands up, tangled blond hair bobbing, chains jangling.

‘Whoa! No, not that kind of relationship. When I’m with her, I’m dead careful to make sure we don’t accidentally, like, touch. No blue sparks.’

‘Blue sparks?’

‘Apart from us being not exactly contemporaries, Mary, it would probably ruin any chance of a business arrangement.’

He was probably right to be cautious. It was unlikely, for instance, that Callum Corey would be lured back to The Weir House, no matter how much money was on the table.

‘What kind of business arrangement did you have in mind?’

‘Dunno, really. But if I can’t make a few quid out of her, who can?’

‘You selling her albums in the shop?’

‘Sore point, Mary. I started selling the albums – Nightshades, very moody cover – and then Doug Lackland, George’s elder son, he drops in one afternoon for a discreet word.’ Jon did the accent. ‘ “Now, we don’t want to underline that she’s livin’ here, do we, Jonathan?” CDs quietly disappear. Dougie bought the lot. No skin off my nose, but it’s not on, is it?’

They’d followed the rising stone wall to the walkway below the castle along which, Jon said, demure Edwardian ladies with parasols had once paraded. As distinct from a volatile Viking in a motorbike jacket and a scruffy little vicar in jeans, a well-worn fleece and tinted glasses.

‘See where that shelf of rock projects?’ he said now. ‘Back of Jemmie’s head hit that with some force, so that were a bit messy, you know, but her face wasn’t damaged. That’s what they say. It’s kind of a – what would you say? – an elemental way to go.’

‘People say you’re dead before you hit the ground,’ Merrily said dully. ‘Or maybe that’s when the parachute doesn’t open.’ She looked up. ‘It doesn’t seem far enough for that.’

The clouds, empurpled by Merrily’s glasses, were foaming now, with not-quite-rain. She walked up to a jagged crevice in the bottom of the rock face or the castle foundations. It was like the beginnings of a cave, or a recess where a statue should be placed – a natural shrine. Someone had left a small posy of flowers in there: anemones.

‘Would’ve smashed every bone in her body,’ Jon Scole said.

‘I thought you said—?’

‘No, I’m thinking Marion now. Would’ve been all rock down here then. I ’spect it’s worn away a lot in eight centuries. And she most likely came from the top.’

‘It’s a very violent way to go,’ Merrily said. ‘A tumult of emotion there. A feeling of betrayal, sure, but she’d also just killed the man she’d loved. Absolute desolation.’

‘You talk like Robbie,’ Jon said.

‘What?’

‘Robbie… the way he’d talk you through it. This little stunted kid in a woolly hat under a lantern in the dark. He didn’t use big words like “desolation” but he’d tell you about all these enemy soldiers swarming up the rope ladder, swords and knives coming out. The guards and retainers not expecting it, having their throats cut. Stone stairs all slippery with blood. Marion running up ahead of them, wi’ blood all over her nightdress and her hands soaked from hacking to death, as you say, the man she loved. And I remember, Robbie said she was sick. He said she had to stop on the stairs to be sick. I mean, that’s not in the story, is it?’

‘Rings true, though. If you imagine all the adrenalin and the extreme violence. The heavy action going on all around, with the enemy pouring in. Everything happening so fast, and her own frenzied reaction when she worked out what she’d let happen. And then she looks back for a moment, realizes what she’s just done to Arnold de Lisle, and her stomach…’

Jon Scole smiled. ‘You want a part-time job?’

A twig snapped under Merrily’s shoe, and she spun round.

‘You’re even scaring yourself,’ Jon said.

‘Was he that vivid about all the ghost stories? Robbie?’

‘Fair to say that were probably his best.’

‘Because if it wasn’t an accident and he killed himself because he couldn’t bear to leave his beloved Ludlow, why did he jump off the wrong tower? Why didn’t he jump off Marion’s tower?’

Jon blew out his lips. ‘Got me there. I mean, I remember he used to say we couldn’t really be sure of anything, because a lot of the castle were built afterwards – after Marion died, that is, which was back in the reign of Henry II or somewhere around there. So it would’ve all looked different, then, anyway.’

‘But Marion didn’t throw herself off the keep. That’s a certainty, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a longer drop, though. You can go right to the top. You’d be more sure of a result.’ Jon Scole walked over to the ancient yew, fingered its swarthy, resinous skin. ‘If this old bugger could talk.’ He grinned. ‘Maybe it can. A lot of mysticism around yew trees.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

‘All about immortality, Mary. Yews go on for ever. Some of them are two thousand years old. They’ve always got them in churchyards, and sometimes they’re older than the church.’

‘I don’t think that’s my kind of immortality,’ Merrily said. ‘Rooted in one spot, for ever and ever.’

‘That would depend on the spot,’ the woman said.

It was hard to say how long she’d been standing there, on the edge of the path, her back to the river and the hills and the forestry. She wasn’t wearing a cape, just one of those ankle-length Barbour stockman’s coats, in dark blue, fastened to the top, the storm-flap half covering her chin.

Merrily thought, How quiet she looks, how demure, how genteel.

‘Actually, I understood that yew trees did well in churchyards because they thrived on corpses,’ the woman said.

28 Tonguing the Yew

IT WAS STRANGE, the fame thing. You told yourself that you would never be overawed by people just because you’d seen them on TV or they were in the Cabinet or the Royal Family. Experience had told you that movie stars and government ministers were often narrow and paranoid, and that power not only corrupted, it reduced.

But it was different with someone who had been famous in the days when you’d been impressed by celebrity and notoriety. There was some part of you that wasn’t going to let go of that, and the old shiver went through Merrily.

‘Historians say the sacred tree of the Druids was the oak.’ That voice of dark green glass. ‘But the Druids wouldn’t have got it that wrong.’

Merrily said nothing, but found she was nodding, in that instinctive, subservient way she always despised. Still, oaks versus yews wasn’t something she had an opinion on, anyway.

‘I love and venerate them,’ Mrs Pepper said. ‘Some protected oaks on my land were apparently removed. No big deal, oaks are all right – solid, dependable, functional, but they haven’t got the intellect, or the cunning. Or the true key to survival. Isn’t that right, Jonathan?’

‘If you say so, ma’am.’ Jon Scole bowed his head – he actually did that.

‘So my yew – I’ve got this incredible yew at home – something ensured that it was left well alone when they took out the oaks. Because removing the yew would have been a very bad thing to do, wouldn’t it? Even Jonathan knows that.’

Jon Scole did another small bow; if there was an underlying disrespect here, it wasn’t immediately obvious. Mrs Pepper came up onto the path, her long coat making a soft, slithery sound around her. She approached the tree.

‘In the great yew-tree scheme of things, this one’s still pretty young, but it was born out of death.’ Talking as if she was addressing a larger group. ‘The yew communicates nature’s most important message about death within life, life within death.’

She had the rhythm going now: the glistening, seamless voice which used to step down, mid-song, into the spoken word without losing the flow. Merrily tried to bring up all the loony images: the sanitary goods under the misericords, the bodies rolling in the ivy among the graves, the lime mix fortified with pubic hair. Somehow, none of this diminished her.

‘I’m going to do the lecture now – short one, don’t worry. Here’s what happens: after one or two centuries, the heart of the tree begins to die, which is why so many of them are hollow. But the outer layer just goes on growing around the hollow space, and the tree gets wider and thicker. When a branch breaks off, the yew self-heals and puts out new shoots. And they go on like that for sometimes thousands of years.’

‘Immortality,’ Jon said. ‘Awesome.’

The sky was a deep, soft grey now, and Mrs Pepper shone against it. Her plaited hair had the remains of many colours in it, a woven rainbow. She bared her teeth, which were small and mischievously pointed, and her big eyes were a startling turquoise.

‘And what’s really cunning about the yew is that the death of the heartwood eradicates the rings by which you can tell how old the tree is. So the yew becomes totally fucking ageless… my kind of tree.’

She opened her arms and embraced the yew, and put out her tongue to its warty pigskin trunk, Merrily thinking, Spare us the theatrics, please…

… As Belladonna began to lick the bark of the yew tree, a slow, intense, liquid lapping.

‘For God’s sake!’ Merrily yelled. ‘It’s pois—’

Bell Pepper looked over her shoulder, gaze locked on Merrily’s, tongue curling up around her upper lip then slowly retracted between small, pointed teeth.

‘Country girl, eh?’

‘I just know it’s very poisonous,’ Merrily said. ‘To animals, anyway. It kills cows and horses. Another reason it’s said they were planted in churchyards was so that farmers would keep their cattle out.’

‘Predates both farming and churchyards, sweetheart – even Jonathan knows that.’

Mrs Pepper bent her head on one side, kissed the tree lavishly, with her mouth open. And then she moved away, smiling, the neck of her coat undone, her throat exposed, turning to Merrily.

‘So who are you, darling? You’re not the woman?’

‘Uh… this is Mary,’ Jon Scole said. ‘Mary, this is… Bell.’

‘Hello,’ Merrily said. ‘Bell.’

Bell looked cross. ‘Jonathan, I’m not sure you heard me. I said, is this the woman?’

Jon Scole seemed worried for a few moments. He looked down at the base of the tree, hacking his trainer into the dust, hands in his pockets nervously flapping his motorbike jacket and making his chains rattle. When he looked up, though, his old smile was returning. He didn’t look at Merrily, but he beamed at Bell Pepper.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s right. This is the woman.’

A face projected onto an already-fraught night by blue emergency beacons… that was just an image. This quiet confrontation on a mild, cloudy afternoon was something else. Especially when the face – this icon of punk-goth perversity – was suddenly behaving entirely in accordance with the legend.

Tonguing the yew, for heaven’s sake!

Merrily trying to be dismissive – maybe Belladonna just wasn’t getting enough attention these days, maybe that was the answer to all of it – so not picking up, at first, on what Jon Scole was doing.

This is the woman?

‘Oh, shit, this is really unfair,’ Jon said. ‘Mary hasn’t the faintest idea what we’re talking about. I haven’t even told her about any of this yet. We’d just, like, walked over here, and I were— I’m sorry, Mary, I was gonna put it to you later. Like, I know you don’t just do this for everybody and money doesn’t make any difference, but I thought maybe this once, you know?’

Merrily stayed silent. Jon Scole tossed back his flaxen locks and put his hands together, as if in prayer. His gaze locked on to Merrily’s and he raised an eyebrow fractionally.

‘Bell’s house – just down there.’ Tipping a thumb towards the river. ‘I was gonna ask you to take a look at it. See if you got anything?’

Now he was looking at her hard, his mouth slightly smiling, his eyes imploring.

‘I see,’ Merrily said.

‘As a psychometrist,’ Jon said. ‘As, uh, a psychic.’

Mrs Pepper said, ‘I’m sorry… Mary? Is it Mary? I must’ve made a very unfavourable first impression. This boy tends to bring out the worst in me.’

‘It’s just his way,’ Merrily said.

‘So I’m going to carry on with my walk,’ Bell refastened her coat. ‘Let you two work this out.’

She moved off, the way they’d come, up towards The Linney and the centre of the town. Her feet were bare inside skimpy sandals, and it occurred to Merrily that she could well be entirely naked under the stockman’s coat.

Or maybe that was just the legend talking.

Down the path, now, the castle opening out on their left, as they walked, Jon Scole trampling last year’s brambles.

‘I’m not gonna apologize for this, Mary. You wanted to get close to her, this is your chance.’

‘You set me up,’ Merrily said.

‘I were thinkin’ on me feet. I said I’d help you and I have. I told you about her, the way she is: thinks she senses, but she wants someone to help her know. If I told her you were clergy, you wouldn’t get within a mile, and if she knew you were an exorcist… she wants her ghosts exorcizing like she wants a double mastectomy.’

Merrily zipped up her fleece, sank her hands into its pockets, the day swirling around her, out of control.

‘She said she gets strong feelings coming off the house,’ Jon said. ‘I say, why don’t you get a medium in? She goes dead sneery – she’s like, Oh, I used to go to mediums once, spiritualist churches, they were a joke. Plus, they kept bringing God into it, doing little prayers.’

‘Isn’t her house a new house, strictly speaking?’

‘Built out of the ruins of the old, though. She reckons it was connected with the castle. She’s opened up a pathway so she can walk up here, to the yew. See, this is where it begins. Bell’s walk. A big circle… up The Linney, through the churchyard, down to St Leonard’s graveyard – route marked out by ancient yews… and then back through the town.’

‘OK, I’m getting the picture. What did you tell her about me?’

‘Well… it wasn’t about you to begin with. This goes back to me saying, look, Bell, some mates of mine, they’re psychic investigators – which is true, they got all the kit and they’ve had some good results. Why don’t we come in, I say, give your place a full going-over? She says forget it. Because, what it is, she doesn’t trust anybody. She thinks they’re gonna talk about it, sell the story. And she doesn’t trust me because I make money out of it, and she’s been ripped off too many times by fakes and phoneys. So I say, OK, I know somebody – a psychic, a psychometrist – who’s so red hot she won’t do it for money. In fact she won’t do it at all unless it’s to further her researches, know what I mean? The real thing. Well, she was interested, I could tell straight off she was interested.’

‘And do you know a psychometrist?’

‘Well… kind of. But I were taking it dead slow. I see her periodically, and I go, bloody hell, I saw that woman and I forgot to flaming mention it. Bugger! Letting her think it’s no big deal to me, but avoiding giving her the woman’s name.’

‘Because this woman doesn’t exist, right?’

‘Uh… not exactly.’ Jon stopped. There was a bench up against the castle wall, near a gateway into the outer ruins. He gestured for Merrily to sit down.

‘You really do sail close to the wind, don’t you, Jon?’

‘What life’s all about, Mary, i’n’t it? See, there’s a friend of mine, lives over in Bewdley, does the same business – ghost-walks. Anyway, I met this girl when I were just setting up, and we had a bit of a thing going and she give me a few tips. Still do each other favours. She was gonna do it, play the psychic for me.’

‘But she’s not a psychic?’

‘Well, we all are a bit, aren’t we? I mean, it’s easy – there are staples in haunted houses: man in uniform, woman at the window. Baby crying. Cold spots. It’s how mediums do it. You mention something – old geezer always wore a muffler, somebody goes, yeah, that’s my grandad. Only in a house, they go yeah, I did feel something in that pantry. Piece of piss, Mary.’

‘Well, forgive me for being—’

‘I’m telling you, you go in there, tell her you can hear a baby crying or something, I guarantee you’ll get a result.’

‘Jon, have you forgotten what I do normally?’

‘God’ll protect you, then, won’t He? Look, you genuinely know about this stuff, right? What you were giving me earlier about phantasms of the living – that’s serious, in-depth knowledge. You could carry it off, no problem. I tell you, she thinks she’s getting something out of you, she’s a pussycat.’

‘And what do you want out of this, Jon? What do you want out of her?’

It was a still day; you could hear the weir. Over Wales, the sun was just visible, like a coin pressed into tinfoil.

‘What do you think I want?’ Jon Scole gripped his knees, leaning forward. ‘How much you think it costs these days to have a shop in Ludlow? Keep enough stock to attract people in?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Me parents left me enough to get a bit of a business going, but costs are always higher than you think they’re gonna be, especially here. The ghost-walks don’t do badly in the season, but it’s peanuts really. And if the Mayor and his family wanna squeeze me out they can do it any time. Could make sure the lease don’t get renewed, for a start.’

‘He wouldn’t do that.’

‘He bloody would, Mary. And could I afford to buy anything proper? Not the way property’s going in this town.’

‘I thought you sold a café to the Little Chef?’

Jon sighed. ‘I sold a bit of land with a prefabricated transport caff on it. No comparison with posh high-street business premises in an upmarket place like this.’

‘So you’re looking for a backer, in other words.’

‘Think what she’s spent on that house. And buying the land to stop the building? You heard about that? Imagine what that cost. Bought it straight out, no financial juggling required. Imagine.’

‘So if she sees you as someone who’s done her a few favours…?’

‘Who knows? Bit of a tightrope, I’ll give you that.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m sorry to’ve hung this on you. I just thought… Well, obviously, I didn’t think at all, did I? I just come out with it.’

He looked a bit lost. He was younger than he’d seemed, maybe no more than thirty. The beard was deceptive, as it was no doubt intended to be.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘you go back to your vicarage, have a think, and if I don’t hear from you again… well, it’s been interesting, hasn’t it?’

‘There’s just one problem here, Jon. Supposing we find out that she did something that could take her away from here? How would that help you?’

‘What, to prison?’

‘Well, I’m not going to arrest her, I’m just a jobbing priest, but…’

‘I’m under no illusions, girl,’ Jon said. ‘The day she finds it impossible to live in Ludlow, that’s the Mayor’s birthday. And you wouldn’t shed any tears neither if you found Robbie’s death was in some way down to Bell. But I reckon whatever you did find out you’d accept it, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t try to twist it or move the goalposts. So if it turns out she’s, OK, out of her tree, but basically harmless, that’s all right, i’n’t it?’

‘We’ll… have to see.’

‘I believe in fate, me,’ Jon Scole said. ‘Whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen.’

Merrily got back into the car and lit a cigarette.

It could hardly be worse, could it? Either she could go along with it, faking ridiculous psychic skills just to gain some kind of access to Bell Pepper (and then what?) or make an ignominious retreat, put the whole issue in front of the Deliverance Panel, let them dismiss it out of hand, accept an official rebuke for not informing them earlier and then wait for the axe to fall.

How the hell had she got into this?

She supposed the paper bag on the passenger seat answered that question. She picked it up and shook out the book: Everyday Life in the Middle Ages, in Pictures. What had a boy as clued-up as Robbie Walsh wanted with a picture book anyway?

She laid it on the passenger seat and flicked through it, expecting cartoon-like artist’s impressions; in fact, most of the illustrations seemed to be from old engravings, stained glass, carvings on tombs. This made more sense – he would have wanted as authentic an illustration as possible of what life in the Middle Ages had been like. It had obviously been important to him, as he’d walked these streets, to see through medieval eyes.

Why had that been so important? Why had an evidently personable adolescent boy needed to retreat through time? What had made the present so unbearable?

She leafed through the book – the reason she’d bought it, for £7.99 – for where the page had been ripped out. Just one missing page, and the facing one had been about… Trial by Ordeal? Was that it? She turned to the chapter headed ‘Medieval Misdeeds and Retribution’.

Page ninety-one had a reproduction of a sombre woodcut, depicting a man hanging from a gibbet, his head bowed over a tightened noose. Several people were gathered around, watching. Some appeared to be smiling.

Merrily stared at it, recalling how the page had been quite carefully removed from Robbie’s copy. The reverse, page ninety-two, had a black and white photograph of the reconstruction of a medieval wooden gibbet from some interpretive museum. Immediately, she was hearing Bernie Dunmore telling her how Bell Pepper might have been dealt with in times gone by on Gallows Hill, still preserved as open space in Ludlow.

Unfortunately, I think our old execution site is underneath Plascarreg. Don’t you dare make anything of that.

She wasn’t about to; it seemed unlikely to be relevant, but it was worth mentioning, and so she called Mumford.

No answer. She rang the Bishop, managed to get him at home. He even seemed relieved to hear her.

‘Woke up in the night, deeply troubled about all this, Merrily. Wondering what I’d let you in for. Came out in a sweat – couldn’t get a handle on what I was expecting you to resolve. Just some great amorphous wrongness. Ludicrous.’

‘ “A great amorphous wrongness.” I do like talking to an experienced metaphysician.’

‘Pack it in and come home. It was stupid of me to even—’

‘We can’t disappoint Dennis Beckett now, Bernie. Erm… something that keeps coming up: The Palmers’ Guild. What’s that about?’

‘In what context?’

‘You remember the Mayor told us Mrs Pepper was setting up a trust to help conserve old buildings in Ludlow? She’s apparently named it after The Palmers’ Guild, which may have built the original house on the site where she’s living.’

‘There’s a window in the church – I’m not an expert on this, Merrily, but you can’t operate in Ludlow without coming across the Guild. Sometimes spelt “Gild” without the “u”, in the old way. They were probably the original Ludlow conservationists – kept the church standing, anyway. Started, I think, in the thirteenth century when a great deal of wealth in the town was coming out of the wool industry. Guilds conferred a kind of pseudo-aristocratic social standing on rich businessmen.’

‘They invested in property.’

‘A couple of hundred properties at one time. Some of the income was used for the benefit of members who had fallen on hard times. It was a cooperative movement.’

‘But the religious side of it—’

‘Right. The Palmers’ window in St Laurence’s has eight stained-glass panels depicting what we can only think of as a legend put about to give the Palmers some authenticity. It was said that, in the eleventh century, pilgrims from Ludlow had brought back a ring from St John the Evangelist which they presented to the King of England at the time, Edward the Confessor. That’s what the window illustrates. It’s probably a fabrication.’

‘On which basis the Guild appointed priests, right?’

‘To devote their prayers to speeding its deceased members out of purgatory. A medieval conceit, difficult for us to comprehend, but it’s clear that this was the main function of the Guild. Started out employing three chaplains, who also served the parish church, but there were as many as eight in the fifteenth century, catering to the whims of four thousand Guild members. A lot of prayer, a lot of Masses.’

‘All focused on immortality.’

‘They were certainly considerably more concerned about what happens afterwards than our society. Even if they did think God was open to back-handers.’

‘I met Mrs Pepper this afternoon.’ Merrily tamped out her cigarette in the ashtray. ‘Briefly.’

‘And did she appear mad?’

‘On one level, barking. She was kissing a yew tree.’

‘I beg your—’

‘Kissing a yew tree. Very sensuously.’

‘I don’t know how to react to that.’

‘The yew is nature’s prime symbol of immortality. I’m just trying to find a link here with The Palmers’ Guild, who built her house and who evidently had a similar obsession.’

‘No more than anyone in those days. And this woman doesn’t appear to be particularly well disposed towards Christianity.’

‘But she’s very much obsessed with place-memories. Ghosts. The way that Ludlow exists in more than one time-frame. It’s as if she wants to experience other… I don’t know. I don’t know if there are hallucinogenic drugs involved here or what. It’s fascinating, in a way. My impression was that she was putting on a show today. Partly because she used to be a rock singer at the theatrical end of the business, and outrageous exhibitionism comes naturally… and partly because it’s a good smokescreen. People think you’re mad, they leave you alone. How people react to your madness tells you whether they… sorry, you still there, Bernie?’

‘Merrily, you’re not… I don’t like to think of you being drawn into anything.’

‘Me?’

‘I realize you must be feeling terribly insecure at the moment.’

‘Insecure,’ Merrily said. ‘She’s evidently looking for some kind of security. Acceptance.’

‘But by whom? Not by George Lackland, clearly.’

‘By the dead?’ Merrily said. ‘Do you think?’

29 All the Big Words

MERRILY DIDN’T REMEMBER when Jane had last been this amused – turning off The Coral on the CD player, coming back to the sofa and curling up in the lamplight, with a cushion clutched to her chest like she used to do when she was twelve, small pulses of amusement producing little choking noises in her throat.

‘This’ – fiendish smile – ‘could be the long-delayed beginning, Mum. The start of the new you, in floaty frocks and snaky bangles. And it’ll be, like, so cool that you never return to the grim old Church, and the future opens out for you like… like something that opens out. A sunflower. Whatever.’

‘And we’ll give up the vicarage,’ Merrily said, ‘and put our names down for a mobile home with wind-chimes, where we have to share a bedroom, and a shower block with the neighbours, and—’

‘Hell, no, you’ll live with Lol!’

Lol. Merrily looked at the clock. He’d be on stage now, having dealt with his nerves with the help of Moira Cairns, for whom he was opening, the woman who had coerced him back to gigs, who had become a kind of talisman for Lol.

Maybe he should be living with Moira Cairns.

Jane was staring at her, wide-eyed. God, had she actually said that out loud?

‘Wow,’ Jane said. ‘You’re actually still paranoid about Moira.’

‘Oh, that’s rid—’

‘Hah!’

‘I’m an actual grown-up now, Jane.’

‘This is because you’ve never met her,’ Jane said. ‘For what it’s worth, when she first appeared, I used to be worried about that, too, because she is, admittedly, mesmerically beautiful. But also, for someone who’s almost a big star, she’s actually relatively OK. She understands things. She once called me a wee pain in the arse.’

‘That was penetratingly perceptive of her.’

‘Seriously,’ Jane said, ‘there are things you could learn from Moira. Like how to step back from other people’s problems and learn to live? Because, when you think about it, neither you nor Lol’s ever had a normal life. Pregnant at nineteen. Widowed with a small and delightfully complex child while you’re still in your twenties…’

‘I’m sorry, when did I ever say you were delightful?’

‘And your only real experience of student life’ – Jane wrinkled her nose in distaste – ‘is bloody theological college… as a mature student… toting a kid. Like, where were the years of clubbing and getting pissed and waking up in strange beds?’

‘Actually that was how it all—’

‘What?’

‘Forget it.’

‘Hmm.’ Jane smiled, and then her brow furrowed. ‘Listen, there’s no penance to be paid, Mum. I mean, OK, yeah, we’ve finally got Lol into the village. But you’re still not getting it right. You’re taking a week off the parish to do this private-eye stuff in Ludlow for the Bishop, but you won’t take a break to maybe go somewhere special with Lol.’

‘You know…’ Merrily repositioned herself on the sofa, awkwardly. ‘I think I was happier when you were just laughing at the idea of me pretending to be psychic.’

‘Yeah, well, that was the wrong attitude. I’ve decided to take it seriously.’ Jane put the cushion behind her on the sofa and sat up straight. ‘You need specialist advice, or that woman is going to take you apart. She’ll just, like, totally dismantle your façade in about ten minutes.’

‘And you can, erm, school me, can you?’

Jane shrugged. ‘I’ve read the books. Spent a few months, if you recall, attempting to worship the moon… when I was young.’

‘It was less than two years ago.’ Merrily looked into Jane’s eyes, surely greyer than they used to be.

‘I mean, I’m not claiming to be anything more than some kind of failed neophyte, Mum, but I reckon I could probably save you from total humiliation.’

Merrily considered this.

When exactly had Jane’s paganism ceased to be a problem for her?

At first it had seemed like a basic teenage rebellion thing: Jane resenting the Church, seeing poor Lucy Devenish, with her talk of apple-lore and nature spirits, as a kind of guru… and then, after Lucy’s death, lying about her age to get into a goddess-worshipping group based at a Hereford health-food shop. In just a couple of years, Jane had encountered pagans and psychics, good and bad, and emerged, at the age of seventeen… oddly clear-headed.

Yes, it was still there in some form, Jane’s paganism, but no, it wasn’t quite a problem any more.

‘All right,’ Merrily said. ‘Can we go through it?’

Yew trees. Jane appeared to have read entire books about yew trees.

‘Making love to one. That’s totally… I mean, I can connect with that.’

‘Are they poisonous to people? I’m not sure.’

‘I wouldn’t personally exchange life-fluids with one to find out,’ Jane said. ‘But I do get the point. She’s embracing immortality. Some yew trees could be the oldest living beings on this planet – and that’s heavy. The idea of a tree being a repository of ancient wisdom is not so crazy. So if she has an ancient yew near her house, and that’s the start of her ritual walk, and then she proceeds to this yew at the castle where Marion fell… Where’s the next one? Bound to be one in the churchyard.’

‘Several, apparently. I think there’s the remains of a yew alley,’ Merrily said. ‘I asked Jon Scole about that.’

‘Cool.’ Jane spread Merrily’s new street map of Ludlow over the OS map of the wider area. ‘And then one in this old cemetery?’

‘St Leonard’s, yes.’

‘So you’ve probably got an ancient and sacred route… maybe even pre-Christian. Maybe a processional route up and over the holy hill between the two rivers. If you think, way back, before there was a town or a castle there’d just be this hill… a holy hill.’

‘How do you know it was holy?’

‘Hah!’ Jane beamed in satisfaction. ‘I looked it up. It’s in one of my books upstairs, and I got some more off the Net. This is amazing stuff. The name “Ludlow”, right? “Low” usually refers to a tumulus or a burial mound, and sure enough there was one.’

‘Where?’

‘On top of the hills. What’s now the highest point of the town.’

‘The church? St Laurence’s?’

‘There was a tumulus which, until the end of the twelfth century, was right next to the original church. And then they extended the church into the tumulus and found that it contained bodies – bones. Which were alleged at the time to be the remains of three Irish saints, because in those days if anybody found any bones near a church it would be, like, more kudos if they were holy relics. They were probably the bones of Bronze Age chieftains… which is cool.’

‘They’ve gone now, presumably?’

‘Doesn’t matter. What matters is that the tower – the tallest tower on the border, OK, the Cathedral of the Marches – is rising up directly out of a pagan site, so it’s like’ – Jane held up a fist – ‘one of ours.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘It’s what they did,’ Jane said. ‘These are geopsychically sensitive sites. If the Church hadn’t built on existing places of power, Christianity would probably have vanished by the end of the Middle Ages. So if Belladonna’s making a personal connection with the sacred centres of Ludlow, that’s the big one.’

‘Well, she certainly goes into the church, even if she doesn’t go to actual services.’

‘There you go. She’s opening herself up to the vibrations.’

‘Opening herself up, all right.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Never mind.’ Ethel jumped into Merrily’s lap and started to wash her paws. ‘What exactly is she doing, do you think, Jane? Where’s she coming from? We looking at witchcraft, or what?’

‘She on her own?’

‘There are some young people who seem to have formed some sort of attachment to her. When I first saw her, she was with, I think, four of them – two men, two women, all wearing Edwardian-type gear, slightly funereal.’

‘Could be part of a coven. Doesn’t seem too likely, though.’

‘They just struck me as basic goths.’

‘OK, listen…’ Jane leaned into the corner of the sofa. ‘I’ve been thinking about this… Could she have any ancestry in the town? Are there any family roots she maybe wants to pick up on? Because that might explain why she was always with Robbie Walsh – he could’ve been helping research it, couldn’t he? That seems to have been the kind of thing he enjoyed.’

‘That’s actually not a bad theory,’ Merrily said.

‘Or, if you want to extend it in a more mystical direction, could she have been, like, hypnotically regressed into recalling some past life in Ludlow? For instance – and this makes sense – suppose she believes she’s the reincarnation of somebody like, for instance…’

Merrily brought her hands together. ‘Marion de la Bruyère!’

‘Well…?’

‘It’s a fascinating thought, flower.’

‘And it explains the suicide links,’ Jane said. ‘And it’s exactly the kind of bollocks a mad old slapper like Belladonna would go for.’

Afterwards, Lol followed Moira back up the M4 to the Severn Bridge services, where she was spending the night. They sat in the café by the big windows where you could see the sweep of the suspension bridge into Wales and the lights bouncing off the estuary’s dark water.

‘I’ve never done that before,’ Lol said. ‘Never.’

Two verses in, freezing up in the heat of the lights, standing quivering, like the mental patient he was singing about.

‘You mean it wasnae deliberate?’ Moira raised an eyebrow, cup of hot chocolate held in both hands, like a chalice. ‘Even I thought it was part of the act. And when you started laughing like that…’

‘Couldn’t stop.’

Doubled up, he’d noticed her watching him from the shadows at the side of the stage, in her long, sea-green dress, the strand of white in her hair like the crack of light down a doorway at night. Expecting her to walk on, gently detach the mike and salvage his set.

Not necessary, as it turned out. The audience had started laughing with him, with no idea why. In the lobby afterwards, Moira’s merchandising guy had sold over sixty copies of Alien. Now he was higher than the Severn Bridge and, every so often, he would shiver at the memory.

‘It was a wild moment, but you never looked back,’ Moira said. ‘You were soaring like a gull. I’m thinking, Jesus, he’s become a performer at last – wee Lol. However, just for the record… why?’ She’d put down her cup. Her hair was tied up now. She wore a grey woolly sweater and white jeans. ‘Go on… just out of interest. For m’ personal files…’

‘Must’ve been the song,’ Lol admitted. ‘It’s always that song. It’s got… something in it I can’t always control.’

‘ “Heavy Medication Day”?’

‘The day I refused to take the pills,’ Lol remembered, ‘Dr Gascoigne said… and I remember him leaning over me, I was sitting in a high-backed chair in the main day-room, and I’d turned it away from the TV, and he leaned over me and he said in my ear, “Don’t go thinking you’re ever going to leave here, Mr Robinson. You see that door? One day, when I’ve been long retired to the south of France, you’ll be straining to get your Zimmer frame through it.” ’

‘Jesus. This is a shrink? This is how they talk?’

‘Well, it’s been said before, but it’s true…’

‘That if it wasnae for the white coat you’d never know which were the patients, right? I tell you what… by the time you’d finished laughing and you did the whole song again, they were with you for the duration.’

‘Um, to change the subject – slightly – I was talking to Tom Storey.’

‘Poor Tom,’ Moira said. ‘Wasnae so rich and famous he’d probably have been under the shrinks years ago.’

Moira had once, way back, been in a band with Tom Storey. It was a very small pond, the British folk-rock scene.

Lol told her how he’d wound up talking to Tom. Moira rolled her eyes.

‘Belladonna, eh? The extraordinary Bell. Used to fancy the hell out of Tom, simply because he was rumoured to be, you know…?’

‘Sensitive?’

‘Amazing the number of women went after him because of that. To guys, a guitar hero. To women, a psychic guitar hero. None of them realizing it was the best way to have the poor guy heading for the airport. Bell couldnae figure it at all – she could’ve had anybody at that time.’

‘You knew her?’

‘Nobody knew her. We did a couple of the same festivals – you did one, I recall. This’d be before America discovered her. She was older than me and always kind of superior – she’s an artist, slumming, and I’m this folk-club kid on the make. And she resented me, probably for the same reason she fancied Tom.’

‘Because she’d heard you were…’

‘A touch fey, aye. Oh, and she’d made a wee pass at me and got soundly rebuffed. That didnae help.’

‘Went both ways?’

‘She went a hundred ways, Laurence, although I tend to think the allegations of actual necrophilia were no more than malicious gossip. It was all a major fetish thing. Other bands and singers, it was a phase. Her, it went on when goth stuff was no longer big-money cool, so…’

‘So there had to be a cause,’ Lol said.

‘Always a cause. They’re saying even schizophrenia’s no’ something you’re born with. The guy I did know was Eric Bryers, her boyfriend way back. Session bass-player, absolutely besotted with Bell. Do anything for her – coke, smack, acid. If you get ma point. She was gonnae have his child and everything, and it was all cosy-cosy, then she suddenly disappears – this is Eric’s version of events – and the next he hears of her she’s in LA and a big star, with no mention of a baby.’

‘Had it adopted, Tom said. He was furious.’

‘Ah, the adoption story, that’s one version. What I heard, the baby was stillborn, and she had a big funeral for it, fancy Gothic grave – that would be more in keeping. Last time I saw Eric, he… Aw, he was busking with another guy in Manchester – I had a gig at the Free Trade Hall, and there he was busking. I’m ashamed to say I couldnae face him, so I walked past quick, with ma scarf around ma head, and slipped all the cash I had on me intae his hat. Talked to a guy some time later, said Eric used to follow Bell’s gigs around the country, busking near the theatres, and getting arrested and moved on. I think he had a solid habit by then, and nobody was using him.’

‘Dead now.’

‘Aye. They got him off the smack and he turned to drink and his behaviour became erratic, and one day the poor devil threw himself off the top of a skyscraper block in London.’

‘Like Seress.’ Lol started to feel a little weird.

‘What?’

‘Rezso Seress – “Gloomy Sunday”?’

‘It’s late,’ Moira said. ‘Start again.’

‘There was this song about suicide which, according to the urban myths, has been leading to people actually topping themselves. By a Hungarian, Rezso Seress. He also died by throwing himself off a building. The Hungarian Suicide Song. Occasionally gets covered by artists feeling a bit daring.’

‘Bell?’

‘Very faithful version. Exactly like the original, down to the scratches.’

‘See, that’s just the kind of fuckin’ stupid thing that woman would do,’ Moira said. ‘The way Eric was, I can actually imagine him sitting there playing the damn thing over and over and refilling his glass. I’d like to give her a good slap.’

‘You ever see her now?’

‘Not in years, she’s well off the circuit – doesnae need it; weird kids keep rediscovering her. They also began using her music on commercials a lot – when TV commercials started becoming so diffuse and surreal you weren’t sure what they were advertising. Stroke me, poke me, invoke me – however that shit went. Only it would be a car. You staying here tonight?’

‘Going home, I think. It’s only just over an hour.’

‘Home,’ Moira said. ‘That’s such a nice word, isn’t it?’

It seemed unlikely he’d be back yet, but around midnight Merrily went to the end of the vicarage drive to see if there was a light on at Lol’s.

There wasn’t. There were no lights on anywhere in Church Street. It was a warm night, with no moon. She lit a cigarette, looked up at the window of Jane’s attic apartment, and there was no light there either. Good. The kid had done enough research for one night.

Kid. It wasn’t respectful even to think of her as a kid any more. She was smart and funny and perceptive and increasingly good to have around. And in eighteen months’ time she’d almost certainly be leaving home.

Home. Merrily turned her back on the vicarage. It had never really felt like home. Seven bedrooms – how the hell could she live here alone? Maybe one of the other five parishes she’d be invited to take on would have a smaller vicarage. Or maybe, when Jane finished school, it would be time to move on, out of the diocese. Maybe the writing was already on the wall, next to a hazy outline sketch of Siân Callaghan-Clarke in episcopal purple.

The image made her angry and she thought, Sod it, I’m going to do it – Mary the bloody psychic.

‘You know the way to be really convincing as a psychome-trist?’ Jane had said as she went up to bed. ‘Just wander around and don’t say a thing. Don’t claim you’ve had any visions or sensations at all. Say absolutely nothing.’

‘What good will that do?’

‘Because all phoney psychics come out with a mass of crap, and when you respond to some detail they snatch on it, and that’s how it works. If you say nothing she’ll think either you don’t want to reveal what you’ve picked up until you’re absolutely certain, or you know it would scare the pants off her.’

Made sense. Merrily pinched out her cigarette and went in.

Lol drove across the bridge into Wales and slowly up the border, along the deep, moon-tinted, green-washed Wye Valley into the lights of Monmouth and back into England and up towards…

Home, yes.

It would be overstating it to say that Moira could read you like a book, but she could see all the big words in your life as if they were spelled out in neon on your forehead.

Home… that was one of them. The last time he’d lived in Ledwardine, it had been a refuge, the place he’d hidden rather than lived in. Now… well, now he actually felt he was probably the right person to be in the house of Lucy Devenish.

And Merrily… that would work itself out. It had to.

Because she was the real meaning of home.

He left the Astra on the square, alongside the oak-pillared market hall. Perhaps he should think about renting a garage somewhere. Tonight, they’d sold more copies of his album than they’d sold of Moira’s. Well, OK, most of the audience would already have had all Moira’s albums, so that was understandable, but sixty copies…

It was twenty to two in the morning. Friday morning, Ledwardine hanging in timeless silence, a bat flittering overhead. Lol stood for a moment on the cobbles, looking across at the vicarage drive – a small, dim light on somewhere in the woody heart of the old house. There should always, he thought, be a light in there.

Tears came into his eyes and he hurried away.

Remembering, as he often would, the first night he’d met Merrily, when Ethel the cat had been given a kicking by Karl Windling and Lol had wound up carrying her to the vicarage. And Merrily had tended Ethel and, although it had been a very bad night for her in ways that he hadn’t yet known about, she’d sat down and lit a cigarette and had said, in a voice full of ironic uncertainty, Talk to me, Mr Robinson… I’m a priest.

Lol unlocked the door and stumbled through the darkness towards the parlour, until he remembered he had power.

He had power.

He clicked the switch and the bulb over the foot of the stairs drizzled out its low-wattage light. Lampshade, Lol thought. Lampshade tomorrow.

A rectangle of white.

Shit.

Before he’d picked the envelope off the mat, he knew what it was.

Somehow he’d forgotten. He really had forgotten. Hadn’t thought about it for ages. It belonged to the days of oil lamps and paint-trays, before he had power.

He almost crumpled it up and threw it away. But the night had already darkened. He tore it open at the door and held it under the bulb.

Your a sick man.

How long you been hitting her

30 Victim

NEXT MORNING, AS soon as Jane had left for school, Merrily drove straight to Hereford, letting herself into the gatehouse office with her own key before Sophie had arrived.

Dressed-down again, jeans and fleece, as yesterday, she sat at Sophie’s desk and rang Lol on his mobile. Still switched off. She left her second so-how-did-it-go? message of the morning. She knew he was back; she’d seen his car on the square.

Outside it was raining hard, Broad Street speckled with umbrellas. In the dullness of the office, the figure 2 was glowing from the message window on the answering machine.

No glow, however, in the messages.

‘Sophie, I think we must talk on the subject of office reorganization – and Mrs Watkins. Call me, please. Thank you.’

Callaghan-Clarke, clipped, concise and ominous. The teacher: see me.

And so barefaced about it, because Mrs Watkins was on holiday. Finding she could hardly get her breath, Merrily was close to phoning back herself. Instead she lit a cigarette, her hands unsteady, fumbling with the Zippo, listening to the second message: Andy Mumford.

‘Mrs Watkins, tried to get you before you left. Don’t know whether you listened to the local radio…’

Actually, in the car on the way here, she’d been listening to Lol’s album with the volume well up, his breathy vocals on ‘Camera Lies’ reassuring with their sense of his need: the camera lies, she might vaporize. A song he’d written in the tingling dawn of their relationship.

‘… Big dawn raid on the Plascarreg,’ Mumford was saying.

Sophie arrived, turning in the doorway and shaking her umbrella over the stone stairwell. She heard the answering machine, left the umbrella outside and came in to listen.

‘Large selection of Class A drugs removed. Three dealers nicked, it looks like. Well… too much of a coincidence, see. Wouldn’t surprise me if Mebus and his little mates hadn’t grassed up their neighbours with a view to avoiding prosecution. I been trying to get my relative on the phone, without success so far, but I’ll keep you informed. Thank you.’

Merrily put the machine on hold and then played the message again. Mumford had not sounded exactly euphoric. But, then, if Jason Mebus was back on the streets without a stain…? And where had Jason found the nerve to grass up his neighbours? Something didn’t sound right.

‘Long overdue,’ Sophie said. ‘Half the drugs in Hereford seem to have come through that estate. I had the radio on just before leaving the house, and it’s now five arrests. Quantities of heroin and crack-cocaine with a street value of somewhere around three-quarters of a million pounds.’

‘That’s huge, for Hereford.’

‘There’ll be large, and possibly liquid, breakfasts in the police canteen, no doubt.’ Sophie slipped out of her coat, hung it behind the door.

‘There’s also a message from Siân Callaghan-Clarke,’ Merrily said. ‘Wants to talk to you about office reorganization.’

‘One can hardly contain one’s anticipation,’ Sophie said.

‘And about me.’

‘In which case, I ought to call her back while you’re still here. However, you didn’t come in to pass on my messages, did you?’

‘I’m in a quandary,’ Merrily said. ‘Need advice from a wise and entirely balanced individual.’

Sophie nodded. It wouldn’t be arrogance that stopped her denying these qualities; she just didn’t believe in wasting time. She sat down on what was usually Merrily’s side of the desk.

‘Tell me.’

Merrily had taken it as far as the encounter with Belladonna outside the castle walls – more bizarre the more she thought about it – when the phone rang. She motioned for Sophie to take it.

‘Gatehouse,’ Sophie said. ‘Ah. Good morning, Canon Callaghan-Clarke.’

Merrily pulled her bag across the desk, took out the cigarettes and the Zippo.

The call lasted less than five minutes but seemed longer. Most of Sophie’s replies were monosyllabic and negative – No… not at all… never – but her minimal facial responses sent out signals of extreme danger. At one point, a corner of her mouth twitched sharply, as though a wasp had landed there.

Finally she said calmly, ‘Canon Clarke, I think you’ll find that such a conclusion is absolutely and utterly preposterous.’

When she put the phone down, the rain was stopping, and a gauzy sunlight powdered part of the room. When Sophie reached out and clicked on the desk lamp, Merrily sensed this was, as was customary with Siân, going to be worse than she could have imagined.

Sophie straightened the notepad on the desk, took a long breath and let it escape slowly.

‘As you’ve probably guessed, Merrily, that wasn’t about office reorganization, it was entirely about you.’

‘There’s flattering.’

‘No,’ Sophie said.

‘No, I didn’t think it would be.’

‘To begin with, she said she didn’t want to hear any more manufactured stories from me, because she now knew precisely why you’d suddenly felt compelled to take a holiday.’

‘She’s bluffing. Couldn’t possibly know, unless Bernie—’

‘Nothing to do with that. Nothing to do with the Bishop or Ludlow or Ms Pepper.’ Sophie coughed. ‘You appear to have taken a holiday to conceal the fact that you’ve become a victim of domestic violence.’

Merrily sprang out of her chair.

‘I’ll make some tea,’ Sophie said.

Lol rang.

‘How did it go?’ Merrily trying to sound bright, the way you did in church on grey Sundays.

‘It was really good.’ His own tone was small and somehow distant, as though it was floating inside a balloon. ‘They… sold over sixty copies of the CD.’

‘That’s incredible, Lol.’

‘Yes, Prof’ll be…’

‘Mmm. He will. And it was OK? I mean, on stage?’

‘In the end. I’ll tell you tonight… maybe?’

‘Definitely.’

And they went on like that for another minute or so, this thick wedge of the unspoken between them, furtive fingers of sunlight sliding between the rainclouds and across the desk, steam rising as Sophie poured boiling water into the pot.

Merrily put the phone down and stared at it, as if it might be bugged.

‘Can’t have leaked out through Mumford. And it couldn’t have come out of Hereford. I didn’t even take off the other glasses to try on the new ones in Chave and Jackson, just held them up to the light. Which leaves only one source.’

‘You live in a village.’ Sophie carried the teapot to the desk.

‘With a shop. Called in the other night for a bottle of wine and some cigarettes and I left my glasses in the car. Never thought about it.’

‘But I thought the people there—’

‘The Prossers are fine, they’d never… No, it was night-time, you see, and the new girl, Paris, was on the till – that is, new to the shop, not the village. Ledwardine born and bred. She probably told everybody who came in and everybody she met on the way home. I didn’t think. I’m so stupid.’

‘And how would it get to Canon Clarke?’

‘I can guess.’ Merrily stood up and took off her glasses in disgust. ‘What exactly did she say about Lol?’

‘She said that – there’s no nice way I can put this – that someone had suggested this was no more than anyone could expect if they became involved with a mental patient with… his history.’

‘Who?’ Merrily was hot with fury. ‘Who – knowing him – would say that?’

‘Canon Clarke said how regrettable it was that so many people still had such a primitive attitude towards mental illness.’

‘But he—’ Merrily hurled her cigarette packet at the desk. ‘Lol was never—’

‘I know that.’

‘And she has no reason to think that either, but she chooses not to correct anyone’s impression.’ Merrily sat down, hands dangling between her knees, head thrown back. ‘What am I going to do about this, Soph?’

‘Merrily, most black eyes have quite a simple explanation, connected with tripping up, cupboard doors…’

‘No, they don’t. Most black eyes are caused by people getting hit. I go around now, telling people I’ve walked into a lamppost, what’s that going to sound like, at this stage? And I obviously can’t exactly open the Plascarreg can of worms, can I? I mean, apart from implicating Mumford, it would seem a bit coincidental after today’s news. I’m… I’m stuffed here, Sophie. And the worst thing of all… I’ve damaged Lol.’

‘Do you want to hear the rest?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘Canon Clarke is wondering, judging by your recent… erratic behaviour—’

‘Erratic, how?’

‘—If this violence hasn’t been a long-term difficulty. Not unknown, in her experience, among the female clergy, who are sometimes rather too assiduous about turning the other cheek.’

‘That woman is so full of crap.’

‘Husbands who resent the ubiquity of religion in the home, become violently jealous of God. So many cases have come to light, apparently, that there’s a special counselling service operating now, within the Church, for just such situations.’

‘I know,’ Merrily said, ‘but this… Sophie, has it occurred to you why she’s telling you about it?’

‘I assume because it’s the quickest way of getting it back to you.’

‘Exactly. Why?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps… rather fewer people than you fear have been exposed to this nonsense. However, if you start to… overreact and go around looking for people to blame, you’re going to spread it over quite a wide circle. Perhaps that’s what she wants.’

‘You do think she has an agenda, then?’

‘We both know she has an agenda, Merrily. I think it’s probably no more complicated than a ferocious ambition.’

‘You know the Archdeacon’s suggesting they hang a bunch of extra parishes on me?’

‘Oh. So that’s true.’

‘Who planted the idea?’

‘I suspect we’ll never get further than a guess. It’s fairly clear that an anti-Deliverance movement is gathering ground within the diocese. I don’t know how we’re going to fight it, but my feeling is that the best way to frustrate this stupid rumour is for you to continue as normal. Not rise to it.’

‘Wearing the glasses or not?’

‘Not, I should say. You have absolutely nothing to hide – if necessary, tell people exactly what happened, you don’t have to name the estate. Anyway, the swelling’s reduced considerably this morning.’

‘And Lol. What does he do? What does he tell people?’

‘He’s the one they won’t ask,’ Sophie said, ‘I’m afraid.’

31 Smoke

‘BASTARDS.’ GOMER PARRY accepted a glass of cider. ‘Thank you, boy. Longer I live, the less number of folks I gives a shit about, and that’s a fact. Bloody gossip-mongering bastards.’

Gomer sat on Lol’s new sofa. It was coming up to ten a.m. He took off his cap, and his white hair sprayed out in different directions like an old wallpaper-brush. He said he’d been out early, giving the churchyard a bit of a trim, casually chatting to folks as they came through… and it had come filtering out – people interested in talking to Gomer this morning because they knew he was well in with the vicar.

‘All sorts of ole wallop. Folks remembering how they seen the vicar creeping out of yere at night, furtive-like. Like her’s got some’ing to be ashamed of. Some daft bitch in the shop, her even said the reason Alison Kinnersley cleared out, went off with Bull-Davies, was you was slappin’ her around a bit, too.’

Lol shook his head wearily. ‘Gomer, that is just—’

‘Aye.’ Gomer put down his cider glass, got out his ciggy tin. ‘I says, listen, you go and ask Alison. You ask bloody Bull-Davies ’isself. Bastards. All this ole wallop. Makes you sick to the gut. One day you’re a hero, next it’s, Oh we knew what he was all along, that feller. Look, boy, I’m sorry to have to bring this to your door, but I figured you needed to know what was goin’ around.’

‘I’m grateful.’ Lol was standing by the inglenook, the hearth stale with dead ash.

‘How’d she actually get it, boy – the bruise – you don’t mind me…?’

‘Kids. It was on the Plascarreg Estate in Hereford. She was helping Andy Mumford – family thing – and there was a struggle with some kids. Nothing to—’

‘Miserable Andy? He’s off the streets now, en’t he?’

‘Retired, but not exactly off the streets. His nephew?’

‘Ar… yeard that boy come off the castle was his nephew.’ Gomer licked the end of a cigarette paper. ‘All goes deep with Mumford, see. Not a happy family. I remember his ole man, Reg Mumford, when he was a copper. Hard bastard – too fond of discipline, you get my meaning. Too handy with his bloody belt was the word. Has an effect, see. Vicar should take more care, you tell her from me.’

‘I will.’ Lol wondered if even Gomer might have harboured some small suspicion that the rumour might be true and that was why he’d come. In or out of a JCB, Gomer believed in direct action, shovelling away all the rubble until you reached the core of whatever it was.

‘Come on then, boy.’ Gomer fired up a ciggy. ‘Spit it out. The ole plant-hire’s been a bit slack lately, see, so I been letting Danny do the lion’s share – needs the money more’n me. You and the vicar wants me to hire a loudspeaker van, go up and down the streets shaming these bastards, I got the time.’

‘No, no. God. Look… Gomer… I was wondering, is it possible to trace the source of these stories?’

Gomer thought about it. ‘Lucy Devenish could do it, only one as ever could just by lookin’ in folks’ eyes. Lucy was so deep into this village, her’d just go round asking questions and gazin’ into people’s faces. Folks spreads stuff they reckons is prob’ly lies, see, they’ll never quite look you in the eye. Once you finds the one knows it’s a lie, you’re getting close.’

‘So this isn’t just gossip?’ Lol said.

‘No.’ The light boiled in Gomer’s glasses. ‘Not in my view it en’t.’

‘Orchestrated?’

‘That’s the word.’

‘Why?’

‘Some bastard got it in for the vicar? Can’t believe that. What’s her ever done but her best? Last vicar, old Alf Hayden, he din’t give a monkey’s, bumbling round the village, how’re you, how’re you? Did he care? Did he hell. They don’t deserve a decent minister, half o’ these bastards. What you got there, boy?’

Lol brought the two anonymous notes over, spread them on the sofa next to Gomer. Gomer took off his glasses, cleaned them on his sleeve and then read each note slowly.

‘You been to the cops, boy?’

‘What’s the point? They’re not threatening letters.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Jane’s been round checking the parish noticeboard, the adverts in the shop window, trying to compare the writing.’

‘Worst thing is, see, the vicar could go in the pulpit on Sunday, denounce the whole thing in public, and folks’d still be shakin’ their daft heads, going no smoke without fire, kind of thing.’

‘She won’t be in the pulpit next Sunday,’ Lol said. ‘There’s another guy booked to take the services.’

‘Bugger.’ Gomer took out his ciggy tin. ‘That en’t gonner help, is it? Folks’ll think her’s gone to one o’ them shelters. When’d the last one come?’

‘Last night. I had a concert over in Bristol, didn’t get back till the early hours.’

‘Many folks yere know you was gonner be out that long?’

‘Apart from Merrily and Jane, nobody.’

‘Chances were it got delivered not long after you went out, then. En’t much cover in this street. Likely they was seen.’

‘You reckon.’

‘Possible.’ Gomer chewed the end of his ciggy. ‘Quite possible.’

Around mid-morning, Mumford rang. He hadn’t quite got his old voice back, but there was a crunch to it that hadn’t been there since he’d retired.

‘I was right, Mrs Watkins.’

‘Sorry… Mebus?’

‘Well… he wasn’t the grass. Nor Chain-boy, nor Chain-boy’s half-brother. It was another boy with them, Niall Collins. He told ’em where the warehouse was – one of the industrial workshops between Plascarreg and the Barn Church. Crack and heroin turnover of twenty grand a week, near enough.’

‘Did we meet this Niall the other night?’

‘I reckon he was the one shouted there was a car coming, when there wasn’t.’

‘Yellow fleece? I remember thinking he looked a bit worried about the way it was going.’

‘He would be. Thirteen, and no form. First offence, see. Mate of Robbie’s, as it happened. Not a big mate, he didn’t have any big mates, but this Niall talked to him a bit.’

‘As distinct from bullying him.’

‘That’s about it. This Niall’s family – his dad lost his job, house repossessed, and they wound up on the Plascarreg. Dad hates it, the drug culture, the need for five locks on your front door. Fairly decent family, in other words.’

‘I expect most people there are.’

‘So what happens, the dad talks to one of the uniforms, says he’s tried to keep his boy away from the scum but it’s an impossible job on that estate. Says there’s a lot the boy knows about what goes on, but if they spills the beans they can’t very well go back living next to the families of the buggers they helped put away. So the uniform fixes up for Mr Collins to talk to Bliss.’

‘Oh good.’

‘Aye. Result is, when all the police vehicles turns up on the Plascarreg at dawn today, there’s a furniture van behind them. While the raid’s on, all the shouting and screaming, the Collinses’ flat’s being quietly emptied of all their furniture, and off they goes into temporary accommodation off the patch.’

‘Got to hand it to Bliss.’

‘Except that, letting the Collins boy off with a caution, they had to reduce the charges for the others. No ABH any more for Mebus. Be down to causing an affray or some feeble rubbish like that.’

‘Who told you all this?’

Mumford was silent.

‘Just that it helps to know, when I’m talking to Bliss. Wouldn’t like to accidentally finger your contact.’

Merrily heard Mumford sniff. ‘Karen Dowell, it is.’

‘Bliss’s new bag-carrier?’

‘Second cousin, twice removed – whatever. Blood’s still thicker than canteen tea. Keep this very much to yourself, Mrs Watkins.’

‘Of course. How are you feeling now, Andy?’

‘Hard to say,’ Mumford said. ‘Bliss gets a handful of collars, he’s happy. But that don’t bring out the truth about Robbie Walsh, do it?’

‘It might. Why don’t you ease off for a bit?’

‘You called last night,’ Mumford said. ‘Got you off 1471.’

‘Oh…’ She told him about the missing page from Everyday Life in the Middle Ages and what the Bishop had said about the execution site. ‘Probably nothing.’

Mumford grunted, said he’d keep her informed. When she put the phone down, there wasn’t even time to tell Sophie about the development before it rang again, and she automatically picked it up.

Sophie reached across. ‘Let me—’

‘Gatehouse,’ Merrily said. If it was Siân, this was as good a time as any.

‘Oh, good morning. This is Smith, Sebald and Partners, solicitors, in Ludlow. I have Miss Susannah Pepper for Mrs Watkins.’

Merrily went out to clear her head. Ran through the thinning rain across the Cathedral Green and around the corner to the health-food shop to grab something for lunch for her and Sophie. Came back and spread it all over the two desks – bean pasties and rice crackers with sun-dried tomato dip. Bars of Green and Black’s Maya Gold chocolate. She was on holiday; it was a picnic.

‘What was she like?’ Sophie asked.

‘She wasn’t like anything. OK, she wasn’t like anybody. Robotic. A machine for processing wills and conveyancing houses. She talked like’ – Merrily nodded at the computer – ‘you know the voice that comes out of an iMac to alert you to an error?’

She leaned back against the window sill, her black fleece open to the old Radiohead T-shirt that Jane wouldn’t be seen dead in any more.

‘OK, I’m exaggerating. She was neither friendly nor unfriendly. She simply informed me that she’d had a long and detailed discussion with her future father-in-law… not that she called him that, she referred to him throughout as County Councillor G. H. Lackland— What are you smiling at?’

‘Nothing.’ Sophie began to brush crumbs from the desk with the side of a hand. ‘Go on.’

‘The substance of it was that if I – or anyone in my department – wanted to elicit any information from her client, Mrs Pepper, all inquiries should be made through her office. In writing.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘You heard me. I said, “Thank you very much, Miss Pepper.” What can you say to someone like that? Could’ve said that if she wanted to develop her acquaintance with Jesus the Saviour she should make the initial approach through my office—’

‘You’re annoyed.’

‘I’m annoyed. I’m very annoyed. Bloody lawyers.’

She was remembering her marriage and the seepage of disillusion. The divorce that would surely have happened if a car crash hadn’t made her a widow.

‘Who told her about you, do you think?’ Sophie said.

‘Could have been anybody – Callum Corey? I wasn’t trying too hard to be discreet. I could tell she just couldn’t wait for me to give her an opening to bring up the subject of harassment and injunctions. “Stay away from The Weir House or…” ’

‘You studied law, didn’t you, Merrily?’

‘Till the embryonic Jane delivered the first kick. About a year. I was also married to one who I thought was going to be a crusader for justice but turned out to be a crusader against justice. Like most of the greedy bastards.’

‘Could they get an injunction to keep you away from this woman?’

‘Unlikely. Anyway, they’d be shooting themselves in the foot, bringing it into the public domain.’ Merrily stood up, decided that she couldn’t face lunch after all. ‘Well, they can’t do a Mumford on me, accuse me of impersonating a priest.’

‘You’re going back, then?’

‘You’re glad?’

‘I hate to see you defensive and frustrated. Shouldn’t be too difficult. You going home now?’

‘I need to talk to Lol. And Jane. I’d hate her to find out about these rumours from anyone else.’

‘Quite.’

‘But first, I think I’ll pop into the Cathedral for a while. Some of the sensations I’ve been experiencing today could fall under the category of Unholy.’

‘As long as you don’t let Him talk you out of anything.’

Merrily blinked. ‘You’re very hawkish today, Sophie.’

‘Sometimes I feel the phrase “turning the other cheek” should come with a number of get-out clauses.’

‘Mmm.’ Merrily nodded, zipping her fleece.

It occurred to her, for the first time, that the level of anger behind Sophie’s cashmere calm might well exceed even her own.

She never made it to the Cathedral.

It was unavoidable. Cream suit, beard like it had been ironed on, he was following his smile in long strides across the green.

‘Merrily!’

‘Nigel.’

‘Tiresome meeting with the Dean and the Chairman of the Perpetual Trust.’

Challenging Merrily to explain what she was doing here when she was supposed to be on leave. Stuff it, why should she have to tell him anything?

‘And how is your poor aunt?’ Saltash said. ‘It is your aunt, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is.’

‘Great pity you haven’t been available. I rather thought we might have discussed the difficulties over in Ludlow.’

‘I thought we’d drawn a line under that.’

‘We should, however, I think, decide where we stand on the issue. In case any of us is… approached.’

‘Approached?’

‘For assistance. Or advice.’

‘I thought you had been. By the police. And the media.’

‘Purely as a psychiatrist,’ Saltash said.

‘Special adviser on mental health to the diocese, as I recall.’

‘And, naturally, I cleared it with the Coordinator before making any comment.’

‘You mean Siân.’

‘It’s so important that we’re aware of what we’re all doing. Effective teamwork, acting in unison, speaking with one voice…’ Saltash looked Merrily in the eyes in a way that made it very clear he was looking at her glasses. ‘Crucial, wouldn’t you say? In such an unstable society.’

32 Media Studies

BY THE TIME Merrily heard the school bus rattling onto the square, she’d been home two hours, doing a manic clean-up of the vicarage, not answering the phone. Going over the black-eye rumours situation, deciding how much to tell the kid. Conclusion: everything… almost.

She finishing hoovering the hall, and looked up into the wizened, thorn-tortured face of Jesus Christ in Holman-Hunt’s The Light of the World, the picture that said, with all its Pre-Raphaelite pedantry, there are no short cuts.

Jane first. And then, tonight, there would be Lol: a different approach.

Jane’s feeling of responsibility towards Lol sometimes verged, Merrily suspected, on the maternal. It had a long history. It was, unquestionably, Jane who had decided that this relationship needed to happen. Jane who had shielded the sparks from the wind, added twigs to the fire. Jane who, when it was going well, liked to bask in its glow. And, when it wasn’t going well, blame her mother.

Merrily touched her eye experimentally. It didn’t hurt.

Jane’s key turned in the lock.

This would hurt.

‘So who was it?’ Jane was gazing steadily into her mug of tea as if its surface would ripple and form into a face. ‘Who do we have to destroy?’

This was after she’d calmed down. Approaching seven o’clock, and the sun had come out to set and to mellow the kitchen in spite of everything.

‘I don’t do destruction,’ Merrily said. ‘I’m a vicar.’

‘I’m a pagan. We’re less squeamish.’

‘Not tonight, huh?’ Merrily said.

‘It’s clear you’ve got a good idea who in this village is trying to shaft you.’

‘Narrowed down the list of suspects, that’s all.’

Down to one.

‘Names?’

Merrily shook her head. ‘Not till I’m sure. I wouldn’t like innocent people to die. Eirion picking you up tonight?’

‘Eight o’clock. Maybe we’ll just go to the Swan.’

‘I think not. You’re still only seventeen. While I’m not naive enough to think you haven’t been going in pubs for the last couple of years, the rule is still not in this village.’

‘Irene’s eighteen.’

‘Anyway, the only reason you want to go into the Black Swan is to broadcast exactly what you’re going to do when you find out who’s been putting it around that Lol hits me.’

‘So? Something wrong with that? I mean, you won’t, will you? Because you’re the vicar. You have to take it on the chin.’ Jane pushed her tea away. ‘And in the eye.’

‘Look, when I first heard about it, I reacted just like you. Well, almost. It took Sophie to explain why that could only make things worse.’

‘Sophie exists to smooth things over. Sophie’s like human cold-cream.’

‘Whoever started the rumour wants us to react badly and, in the process, tell everybody who hasn’t already heard it. Thus doing their job for them. I think that makes sense.’

‘Doing nothing makes sense? Letting people think that Lol’s unstable again? You know where they’ll take it next, don’t you? They’ll think back to what happened last Christmas, and, like, where that used to be good – what a hero, saved Alice’s life – they’ll be like, yeah, but there was violence involved. OK, he never laid a finger… or did he?’

‘Don’t let your imagination—’

‘Mum, this is a bloody village.’

‘Jane, will you just…’ Merrily bit down on it. ‘What are you planning to do tomorrow?’

‘Go round the square, knock on a few doors, hold a kitchen knife to a few people’s throats. Dunno, really.’

Merrily thought about this. Contemplated the lesser of two potential evils. It would be unwise to leave Jane alone here, on a Saturday with the village crowded with locals and tourists and the whole day to consume.

‘You fancy coming over to Ludlow?’

‘Why would I?’

‘Meet a mad woman?’ Merrily said. ‘Make like a pagan?’

She could see the flaring of excitement in Jane’s eyes and how subtly it was extinguished.

‘Yeah, OK,’ Jane said.

Jane decided she didn’t want to do the clubs in Hereford tonight. Too expensive, even if Eirion was still living off the loot from his eighteenth birthday, and too loud to talk. And, naturally, she wanted to be home not-too-late and up early, nice and fresh, for the siege of The Weir House.

Belladonna. Oh boy… Couldn’t believe Mum was involving her to this extent. This was a major rites-of-passage situation. Not to mention a seminal event in Christian–pagan relations.

Between them, they would really nail this mad bitch to the wall.

So, in the end, she and Eirion ended up doing the old snog-walk through the white lights of Left Bank Village, down to the Wye, which some of the sad planning anoraks at Hereford Council were determined to see as like the Seine, only narrower and with just the one café.

She told Eirion about Operation Belladonna – how she was holding her breath in case Mum changed her mind. After which, it seemed legit to discuss the domestic-violence outrage.

‘The trouble is, Mum and Lol, they’re both so totally naive.’ Jane watched the white lights in the water, like a submerged birthday cake. ‘Plus the rock-bottom self-esteem problem. They won’t fight.’

‘Which means you have to fight on their behalf?’ Eirion said. ‘I’m sorry, Jane, but we’ve been through this before, and it doesn’t mean that. When you think of all the trouble you’ve caused in the past by acting first and thinking… well, not thinking at all.’

‘Ah, that old Welsh caution… as you cowards like to call it.’

‘It’s how we survived centuries of English imperialism.’

‘Nah.’ She searched his broad face, what she could see of it. ‘You’re too sophisticated to believe that crap.’

‘However,’ Eirion said, ‘from my humble Welsh perspective, I do tend to think that Lol is becoming less easy to damage. You only have to listen to the new music. The very fact that the music is now dealing with some of the bad things that people have done to him… like he’s absorbing it in a creative way.’

‘However, you’re a pretentious git sometimes, Irene.’

‘I’m right, though. I think he’ll absorb this, too.’

‘He’s emotionally vulnerable,’ Jane said stubbornly.

‘Well, so am I.’ Eirion going all pathetic. ‘And I have to carry the Welsh chip on my shoulder. And do you have sympathy for me?’ He slid his stubby Celtic fingers down her waist to the top of her thigh. ‘Lighten up, Jane. Your mother’s right, you’ll only make it worse. That’s why she’s taking you to Ludlow.’

‘Well, I prefer to think she needs an occult consultant with a pagan perspective.’

‘And you’re fascinated.’

‘Not by Belladonna. She was always crap. Now she’s crap and passé.’

‘She’s surely part of your mum’s essential history. Doesn’t that interest you at all?’

‘Goth frocks and fuck-me shoes? I don’t think so.’

‘I bet your mum looked—’

‘Don’t go there, Irene.’ Jane brandished a menacing finger. ‘Just… don’t.’

Eirion grinned.

‘Besides,’ Jane said, ‘if I’m generously putting my years of intensive pagan studies at the disposal of the bloody Church of England, even though it doesn’t deserve it… Where are we going?’

‘Isn’t there a nice, quiet bench somewhere along here where we can watch the play of light upon the river?’

‘And feel the play of hands inside the bra?’

Eirion moaned softly. Then this shout came from somewhere, like a stone skimming over the water.

‘Lewis!’

‘Oh no.’ Eirion stopped. ‘Who’s this?’

Two guys were strolling crookedly along the bank from the direction of the bridge.

Jane sighed. This was always a problem. On a Friday night, most of Eirion’s sad, rich mates from the Cathedral School seemed to hit Hereford in force. So much for the quiet bench.

They slunk over. One was about Eirion’s size, the other taller, kind of droopy and languid-looking, hair flopping over his eyes. They stood there gawping at Jane, total inane tossers clutching long cans of lager.

‘Hey, hey,’ the tall one said. ‘This must be the vicar’s daughter.’

‘She was only a vicar’s daughter…’ The other one struck this ridiculous pose, then swayed and stumbled. He steadied himself. ‘Der… she was only a vicar’s daughter, but she… Shit, I can’t think of one, what’s the matter with me tonight?’

‘You’re pissed,’ Eirion said. ‘Bugger off.’

‘I can’t be pissed, Lewis, it’s not ten o’clock yet.’

‘Well, go and get on with it,’ Eirion said. ‘You’ve only a couple of hours before it’s time to start vomiting in the gutter.’

Neither of them moved.

‘So,’ the shorter one said, ‘you two just sloping off for a shag?’

‘Don’t let us stop you,’ the tall, languid one said. ‘We’ve not had a good laugh all night, have we, Darwin?’

Darwin? Was that his first name? Jane looked at them and mouthed the word at Eirion.

‘Well, come on,’ Darwin said. ‘There’s a bush over there. Kit off, girlie, chop, chop.’

A fine rain was in the air, like the mist from an aerosol.

‘Oh dear.’ Jane looked at the two guys. ‘How embarrassing, Eirion. You didn’t tell me this was a gay meeting-place…’

‘Jane.’ Eirion gripped her wrist. ‘Don’t start.’

‘Little bitch,’ the tall one said, kind of surprised. He leaned forward, lager slurping out of his can, and one of the floodlights from somewhere splashed on his face, and Jane blinked.

Darwin spread his arms. ‘Hang on… hang on… it’s coming.’

‘That was quick,’ Eirion said, ‘and I never even saw you slide your hand in your pocket. Come on, Jane, let’s…’

‘She was only a vicar’s daughter,’ Darwin said. ‘She was only a vicar’s daughter, but he pulled out his dick and said… pulpit!’

They were both still laughing, while Eirion was dragging Jane away, along the bank and back up into the crowds and the lights of Left Bank Village, straight through and out into Bridge Street.

‘Never,’ he said, panting, ‘get into a scene like that so close to a river.’

Jane looked behind. Nobody following them. They started to walk up the hill towards King Street which led to the Cathedral. Eirion was saying something; Jane didn’t hear over the putter of a kerb-crawling taxi and the sound of her own thoughts. It couldn’t be.

It was, though.

‘Irene…’ Tugging on his hand to stop him.

‘What?’

‘The taller guy. How come you know him?’

‘Because I go to school with him, Jane.’

‘He’s like… one of the students?’

‘Well, he’s not the bloody Head, is he?’

‘Irene, that’s… I mean.’ Jane backed into the doorway of a darkened shop. ‘Oh God…’

He moved in next to her. ‘You all right?’

‘What’s his actual name?’

‘The streak of piss? J.D. Fyneham. He’s in my media-studies group.’

‘Media studies, huh?’ Jane said.

‘It’s a fairly new thing. There’s only a few of us serious about it, the rest are just skiving off.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Fyneham? Obsessive. Also, reckons he knows it all on account of his dad was a journalist, and he’s had tips from all his dad’s mates. Refuses to write for the school magazine, because it’s so unprofessional.’

‘Um… how long’s he been writing for Q magazine?’

‘In his dreams.’

‘No, Irene, listen… he’s the guy who interviewed Lol.’

Silence.

‘What are you saying, Jane…?’

‘Irene, I’m not kidding. I saw him with Lol. On the square. Taking his picture. It was definitely him, no question… That… I mean, that’s not very likely, is it?’

‘J.D. fucking Fyneham?’

‘Gave his name as Jack Fine, Lol said.’

Eirion stood on the kerb. The lights here weren’t terrific, but his face looked, like, black with rage. Eirion stepped back onto the pavement, turned back towards Bridge Street.

‘Right…’

‘No!’ Jane grabbed his arm. ‘Let’s… let’s think about this…’

As Lol didn’t have a table yet, they’d spread the notes out on the kitchen unit, from ‘vicerage’ to ‘your a sick man’.

‘Same writing,’ Merrily said. ‘No question. If it isn’t connected, it’s a bit of a coincidence.’

She was relieved that, without having left the house all day, Lol seemed to know more about this than she did, thanks to Gomer Parry. You could always count on Gomer – the crucial disc in the spine of the village since Lucy Devenish died. The fact that Gomer had been round, taken the initiative, made her feel a little better.

‘Or the writer simply reacts to events,’ Lol said. ‘An opportunist.’

‘Do you have any idea who it might conceivably be?’

Lol shook his head. ‘You?’

‘Well… yes.’

‘You do?’

‘Not the notes, but certainly the rumours. It’s a bit obvious, but… Siân Callaghan-Clarke knew everything, OK? I can see only one direct route from Ledwardine to Siân, and it goes through Saltash. Therefore it has to go via the surgery. Because, every week, Saltash goes jogging with Kent Asprey.’

‘Asprey told him?’

‘Breeding ground for germs and gossip, that surgery. Asprey would have been one of the first to know.’

‘I don’t get it. Does Asprey have anything against either of us?’

‘He’d pass it on to Saltash without thinking. A doctor thing.’

‘We can take it neither of them wrote these, then,’ Lol said.

‘Huh? Oh… too legible.’

‘Grammar too correct, also.’

They stood there in Lol’s kitchen, smiling at one another like fools, making light of it. Yeah, trivial, really, something and nothing.

But even though the power was connected now, the place was full of shadows. It was as if some great cosmic force – to which Merrily refused to put a name – had decided that she and Lol… this unlikely liaison was never going to be allowed to work out.

Unsurprisingly, the confrontation by the river and its aftermath had stripped the night of what passed for romance in Hereford, and Jane got taken home well before midnight.

Eirion – normally well balanced and philosophical to the point where you wanted to shake him – was seriously pissed off. She knew he’d been quietly committed for some time to building a career in the media, and the idea that a guy at school his age already had one… Driving back to Ledwardine, Eirion had conceded that it was just about conceivable that this Fyneham had contributed snippets, maybe even the odd concert review to Q. But an interview? A freaking interview?

She hadn’t seen him like this before – saying how he was going to crack this wide open, and he wasn’t going to wait till Monday, because if this bastard was scamming Lol…

Well, right. Enough shit had happened to Lol, and so J.D. Fyneham was on borrowed time with Jane. too. But she wouldn’t get in Eirion’s way on this; she’d go to Ludlow tomorrow with Mum, do the dutiful-daughter thing.

It was good to find, when she let herself into the vicarage, that Mum was still at Lol’s. She put the kettle on, went up to the apartment, raided her shelves for any books that might mention Ludlow and brought them down to the scullery, where she sat with Ethel and switched on the computer.

J. Watkins, pagan-consultant. She could very much live with that.

However, paganism-wise, apart from the siting of the church, there didn’t seem to be much happening in Ludlow itself… although there were more suggestions that the wider area had been significant in the Bronze Age. Over twenty prehistoric burial mounds had been found at Bromfield, a mile or two north of the town – the Bromfield Necropolis. Cool term.

She checked out the church tumulus again, downloading more detail.

The Irish saints whose remains were found inside the mound were identified as Cochel, Fercher and Ona, who had come to live in the area. However, holy relics were much prized in those days…

Et cetera, et cetera…

Mum had come in, was leaning over her shoulder.

‘It’s OK, I’m quite willing to accept they were more likely to have been the remains of three guys with big beards and horns on their helmets.’

Jane looked up. ‘You sound happier.’

‘We rationalized the situation.’

‘Lol’s OK with it?’

‘Yeah, Lol’s… more OK than I expected.’

Jane smiled and nodded. Best not to tell Mum about J.D. Fyneham until it was confirmed one way or the other. She pointed at the screen, which showed an aerial photo of Ludlow with the church and the castle vying for prominence and the church probably winning, even though the castle had much more ground and the church was crowded by streets on three sides.

‘I think we should maybe check out the church, before we see her,’ Jane said. ‘OK?’

‘But before that we should pop into our own church.’

Jane looked over her shoulder. ‘Why?’

‘I’m not making a big thing of this. I’d just like us to do St Pat’s breastplate and the Lord’s Prayer… if that’s OK?’

‘You think we need spiritual protection?’

‘There’s nothing lost.’

‘OK.’ Jane shrugged. ‘I’ve never been a chauvinistic pagan. But, like, you really think this achingly sad, faded, 1980s icon is a source of satanic evil?’

‘I’ll be honest – I don’t know. We don’t know what she’s collected over the years.’

‘No gold discs, that’s for sure,’ Jane said. ‘Sorry. Sorry.’

She thought of the last time they’d done something like this, before the Boy Bishop ceremony in Hereford Cathedral, back when Mick Hunter was Bishop and Mum was a novice exorcist. It had followed one of the biggest rows they’d ever had, and it seemed like half a lifetime ago, and it was good to think how much more adult they both were about this kind of thing now.

‘Look,’ Mum said, ‘it’s not that I feel particularly insecure about assuming a role which admittedly is in… explicit denial of my Christianity… if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘Didn’t say a thing.’

‘OK…’ Mum put a hand to her forehead. ‘I’m probably lying. Of course I feel insecure. And I really don’t know if it’s a good thing to have you along or not.’

‘I can watch your back,’ Jane said. ‘You know me.’

Mum rolled her eyes and winced at the pain this evidently caused. The swelling had gone down now, but it was still conspicuously a black eye.

The phone rang. They both stared at it.

‘Might be Lol?’ Jane said.

They carried on staring at it, because this was late for any kind of call, until the machine cut in. Then there was a man’s voice Jane didn’t recognize, a Northern kind of voice.

‘Mary… if you’re still up… Shit… I got a problem here. With Bell. I didn’t know who to—’

Mum picked up.

‘Jon?’

Jane could hear a sound of apparent relief, then a lot of gabbled talk, Mum listening, the computer screen turning her face mauve.

‘What about the police?’ Mum said. And then she said, ‘Isn’t there a cottage hospital?’ And then, after about half a minute, she said, ‘All right, I’ll come over,’ and put the phone down and stood there for a moment with her lips set into a tight line.

‘What?’ Jane said.

Mum let out a breath. ‘Jon Scole, the ghost-walk guy. She turned up on his doorstep, about half an hour ago. He’s got a flat over his shop, and there’s an alleyway and some steps, and she was on her hands and knees…’

‘Belladonna?’

‘She was doing her… walk, and they were waiting for her, where The Linney goes down towards St Leonards and the river. Dark, narrow, secluded…’

‘Who were?’

‘Seems to have been girls – women. They were waiting for her, and they started hurling abuse. And then they… they just beat her up.’

‘The women did?’

‘And she won’t have the police brought in, and her stepdaughter’s away for the weekend, and Jon Scole doesn’t know what to do.’

‘We’re going over there?’

‘Looks like I’m going,’ Mum said.

‘What about me?’

‘You get some sleep. I’ll be back as soon as I can. And we’ll still go back tomorrow.’

‘It is tomorrow,’ Jane said.

And sensed that everything was about to go seriously wrong.

When the phone went again, not five minutes after Mum had left, Jane didn’t even have the heart to do the spoof-answering-machine bit.

‘Ledwardine Vicarage.’

‘Is that Mrs Watkins?’

‘She’s… not available. This is Jane Watkins.’

‘It’s Gail Mumford here. Andy Mumford’s wife.’

‘Oh, yeah, I know.’

‘She isn’t with my husband again, is she?’

Jane smiled. It was like Mum and Mumford were having some kind of torrid affair.

‘I can honestly say she isn’t.’

‘You haven’t heard from him, have you?’

‘I…’ Jane had picked up some serious strain in this woman’s voice. ‘No, I’m pretty sure we haven’t. He’s out somewhere?’

‘He’s been out all day, I think. I don’t know what’s the matter with him. When he was with the police, at least you— Look, I don’t know how old you are—’

‘Old enough,’ Jane said. ‘Look, Mum’s had to go over to Ludlow. I don’t think she’s expecting to see Andy there, but I’ll give her a call, and if…’

Jane noticed Mum’s mobile, left behind on the sermon pad. Bugger.

‘… If I get to speak to her, and she knows anything, I’ll get back to you. Will you be up for a bit?’

‘Of course I’ll be up.’

‘OK. And, of course, if we hear from Andy meanwhile—’

‘If you hear from him, you tell him he might not have a wife here when he gets back,’ Mrs Mumford said.

33 Lift Shaft into Heaven

MERRILY LEFT THE Volvo outside the health-food shop at the bottom of the row, just up Corve Street from St Leonard’s chapel, and walked up to Lodelowe, its small window misted crimson from a lamp burning in the recesses. It made her think of shrines.

The alleyway next to the shop door was unlit and made her think of the Plascarreg Estate, and that made her want not to enter the alley.

The night was mild, almost warm. She peered into the shop window, over the painted plaster models of timber-framed houses, a stack of tourist pamphlets: Haunted Ludlow. No movement in there, and – she backed off and looked up towards the centre of town – no movement on the street, either, apart from shifting shadows and the glimmer of street lamps and the waning moon in old windows and the traffic lights near the crest of the hill. Always an eeriness about traffic lights in the dead of night, when there was minimal traffic, as though the lights must be a warning of something else that had always travelled these streets, silent and invisible.

She stumbled over the kerb as a ribbon of female laughter unravelled from somewhere not too close. She thought of women and girls binge-drinking in packs, beating people up. Was this a twenty-first-century phenomenon, or was it happening just the same when this town was young, in the days of Merrie England, when street violence was part of the merrie system? And therefore the apparent growth of civilization was all illusion – God seeing right through it, looking down with weary cynicism, the oil running low in his lamp of eternal love.

Night thoughts. Merrily stepped back as a light was put on, and all the bricks in the alley came to life.

‘Mary?’

‘I’m here.’

She stepped into the alley. Jon Scole was standing at the bottom of some steps, under an iron-framed coach lamp, his leather waistcoat undone over a black T-shirt, a bunch of keys hanging from his belt, like a jailer’s keys.

‘Hey, listen, I’m sorry, Mary, I did try to ring you back.’

‘Damn.’ Patting the pockets of her fleece. ‘Came out without the phone.’

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘she’s gone now.’

‘Where?’

‘You better come in.’ He stepped back for her to go up the stairs, which were concrete, a kind of fire escape.

‘Is she hurt?’

‘Not much, I don’t think. Sick, though.’

‘Sick?’

‘Go on up.’

Climbing the steep steps, Merrily realized how tired she was. A long day, or was that yesterday?

The door at the top was ajar. It was an old door, patched and stained, the light inside mauve-tinted. She went through, directly into the room over the shop, a room that shouted temporary. Strip lights were hanging crookedly from a bumpy ceiling shouldered by old beams smeared with new plaster. The furniture was second-hand rather than old – the kind of stuff Lackland Modern Furnishings might have sold twenty-five years ago. There was a wide-screen TV and a stereo with silver speaker cabinets, and a flat-screen computer that looked expensive.

The room smelled of curry.

‘Bit of a mess,’ Jon Scole said. ‘Haven’t had time to tart it up yet. Can I get you a drink? Red wine? White wine?’

‘Jon, it’s after midnight, I’m a bit knackered.’

‘Sorry.’ His flaxen hair was slicked back, and his beard looked damp, as though he’d held his face under a tap to sober himself up. ‘I’m not thinking. She does your head in. Look, at least sit down. Cup of coffee, yeah?’

‘No, really…’ She lowered herself to the edge of a red, upholstered chair with wooden arms. ‘Just tell me what happened.’

‘It’s like I said, she comes banging at the shop door. I’d not been in long, been down the pub with some tourists after the ghost-walk. She’s like, “They’re after me.” ’

‘Who were they?’

‘Just girls… women. See, she’s safe, more or less, if she stays up the posh end of town. Anywhere else, pushing her luck. She’s not popular in some quarters. It’s like, rich slag doesn’t give a shit for the poor young people she’s forcing out.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning the land over there, below the castle, that this guy was gonna build on and she bought off him?’

‘I thought people were delighted about that.’

‘Some people were delighted – the neighbours who’ve got all the old houses near hers, the ones as were faced with losing their view and getting kids on bikes, and lawnmowers and radios and idiots cleaning the fuckin’ car on a Sunday morning – they were delighted, the Ludlow bourgeoisie. But, you see, there’s a ruling now from the council that if you’re building new housing you’ve got to include a percentage of affordable homes.’

‘I get it.’

‘’Course, this guy Dickins, the feller planning to build down here, he’d agreed to double the low-cost quota. He’d’ve wormed out of it if he’d got planning permission, but he gets the benefit of the doubt, unlike the bitch who’s denied young people their only chance of having an affordable house in a decent part of town. So that’s why they went after her, I reckon. Get tanked up and then it’s like, Let’s wait for the rich bitch. Rage and booze, Mary.’

Jon Scole went and stood by the window. It overlooked Corve Street, a red-brick Georgian dwelling opposite, under a street lamp: the unattainable, unless you’d sold your house in London.

‘What did they do to her, Jon?’

‘Mucked her up a bit. Mauled her about. She wouldn’t go into details.’

‘It’s a police matter.’

‘She don’t want the publicity. If I rang the cops, she’d never speak to me again. Anyway— Bloody hell’ – he squatted at her feet and looked up into her bruised eye – ‘what happened to you?’

‘I have a dangerous job,’ Merrily said. ‘Where’s she gone?’

‘So that’s why you were wearing them sexy shades.’

‘How long was she here?’

‘Went in the bathroom to clean herself up, and that was when I phoned you. I see you’re not wearing a wedding ring.’

‘You told her I was coming?’

‘She wasn’t gonna wait. Just hung on till it had gone quiet and then she was off. About quarter of an hour ago. You got a boyfriend, Mary?’

Merrily didn’t move; if she leaned away from him she’d be trapped in the armchair, if she edged forward she’d be touching his knees. He was evidently still a little drunk. It would, on the whole, have made more sense not to come up here.

‘What was she wearing?’

‘Aye, well…’ Jon Scole stood up. ‘That couldn’t’ve helped.’ The keys clunked at his belt; he seemed to like wearing things that made metallic noises.

Merrily took the opportunity to stand up, too, stepping nearer the door.

‘She’s got… kind of a nightdress on,’ he said. ‘Satin. It laces up at the sides. It looked… strange.’

‘She was walking through the streets like that?’

‘I offered to drive her home. She wouldn’t let me. Just as well, I expect I’m a touch over the limit.’

‘You could’ve walked back with her.’

‘Mary, nobody’s allowed to do that. When she walks at night, she walks alone.’

‘Don’t you think you should ring the police now?’

‘She’d know who it was. I keep telling you, Mary, I don’t want to blow it with her. She’s like…’ He waggled his hands. ‘Look, if you wanna make sure she’s OK, I know which way she goes.’

‘What sort of state was she in?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Shocked? Distressed?’

‘I don’t know…’ He went to the window, looked down into the street. ‘Angry… electric.’

‘In what way?’ Merrily moved nearer the door.

‘It’s like something charges her up. I went to watch her, once. I waited for her in the churchyard, behind a tree – just to watch what she did, you know? I’d waited for bloody ages by the time she showed. I mean showed – faded up, not a sound. Weird. She was like she was in a trance – like her mind was somewhere else, but her body was… wooar… trembling. Vibrating, you know? Like it was aglow. I’m probably exaggerating this a bit, she was just a woman walking in the dark. Anybody like that in these streets is bound to look a bit spooky.’

‘You approach her?’

‘Break the spell? She’d have had me eyes out. I let her go past, and I went home.’

‘What did you think was happening?’

‘She was getting off on it.’

‘On what?’

‘I don’t know.’ Scole seemed almost angry that he didn’t know. ‘When she comes banging on the door tonight, she’s all over me. Hot and… you know. Burning up. It’s why I called you. Anybody could see she were burnin’ up…’

Merrily waited by the door. There was a dark green waste bin next to it, with chip paper in it, a curry carton, squashed lager cans.

‘I din’t trust meself, all right?’ He looked down at his trainers. ‘Didn’t wanna blow it.’ He looked up, across at Merrily, punched his palm. ‘I cannot believe you’re a priest. What’s a woman like you doin’ bein’ a fuckin’ priest?’

‘Which way did she go, Jon?’

‘Dunno. Back towards St Leonard’s? Makes no difference, she’ll pass through St Laurence’s churchyard. Whichever way she goes, it always takes in the churchyard. I’ll show you, eh?’

‘No, I think it’s best if I go on my own, thanks. We don’t want her to feel threatened. Not after what happened.’

‘You think that’s safe, Mary, on your own?’

‘It’s Ludlow, Jon, not Glasgow.’

‘I wouldn’t touch you,’ Jon Scole said, plaintive.

‘I know. I just… maybe I should talk to her on my own. Maybe it’s the best chance I’ll get.’

‘As a psychic?’ He laughed.

‘Something like that.’ She pushed down the door handle and the door sprang against her hand, and she was grateful he hadn’t locked them in. ‘And, yes,’ she said, ‘for future reference, I have got a boyfriend.’

‘Well, he’s a lucky twat,’ Jon Scole said bitterly, not moving from the window. ‘Hey…’

‘What?’

‘You wanna watch yourself, Mary. She likes women, too.’

‘But not priests, apparently,’ Merrily said. ‘If it gets difficult, I can always flash the cross.’

There were still a few people around as Merrily walked quickly up through the centre of the town towards the Buttercross: the inevitable sad drunk, the inevitable couple-in-a-shop-doorway and, more curiously, two women with one small boy trotting ahead of them, a good six hours after his bedtime. All the untold stories of night streets.

At the Buttercross, she slipped like a cat into the tightness of Church Street, narrow as a garden path, with its pub and its bijou shops and galleries, most windows dark now. Behind this street – seamed by alleyways, made intimate by moonlight and scary by shadows – was the church of St Laurence with its great tower, the axle through the wheel of the town.

She stood at the main entrance, looking directly up at the Beacon of the Marches, taller by far than the castle keep. The tower, with its lantern windows, seemed to be racing away from her, a lift shaft into heaven, and she thought about the Palmers’ Guild, convinced it was pressing the right buttons. Medieval Christianity: two steps up from magic.

The night was soft and close here, the air still sweet with woodsmoke from dying fires in deserted hearths, and the sky was olive green, lightly stroked with orange in the north.

She stood listening for a couple of minutes, almost convinced that if there was anything abusive or violent occurring anywhere in Ludlow she’d be able to hear it, because this was the nerve centre. Never had a cluster of buildings felt more like some kind of living organism, and she wondered if Belladonna, of whom there was no sign at all, was standing somewhere, just like this, letting it heal her.

Or perhaps she’d simply run all the way home.

Merrily walked past the body of the church into what she thought was College Street, old walls closing in – was this the college where the chaplains appointed by the Palmers’ Guild had lived? Turning a dark corner, now, and emerging into what could only be The Linney, the narrow lane that followed the castle wall to the river, the backstairs from the country to the heart of the town.

She walked quietly down the centre of the lane, which would be just about wide enough for one car if you were daring enough to risk it. Terraces and stone cottages were wedged either side, most of them unlit, backing onto the darkness of the castle’s curtain wall to the left and the edge of the hill to the right, a gap between houses revealing the countryside below salted with tiny lights.

Feeling as if she was balancing on Ludlow’s curving spine, she stopped and listened again. No movement, and no obvious place of concealment in the narrows of The Linney. There was a sign announcing a new restaurant, and someone had stuck a white paper flyer on it that read, The Lord will tear down the temples of gluttony!

After the last house, a path to the left… surely the path that burrowed among the castle foundations, the path she’d taken with Jon Scole to the yew tree where Marion fell, where Jemima Pegler fell with the heroin raging through her veins.

Here, the ground softened underfoot and the texture of the night seemed to have altered, the shapes of trees morphing into matt shadows and the woodsmoke aroma becoming the raw stench of damp earth.

And the castle was a hard form, a stronghold again, the land falling invisibly away to the right of the track, through the trees and into darkening fenced fields, sports clubs, and the river and the woodland around The Weir House.

And Merrily knew, then, that it was too quiet.

There should be wildlife-rustlings, foxes prowling, badgers scrabbling, night birds, and… and there wasn’t anything.

She stopped.

Sometimes on still evenings, before a church clock chimed somewhere, you would be aware of a pause in the atmosphere itself – a soft, hollowed-out moment, all movement suspended. And then a vibration, like a shiver, as if the air knew what was coming. When you spent days and nights hanging around churches, it became a familiar phenomenon. It seemed like part of the mechanism, and maybe it was – some ancient acoustic collusion between night and clocks.

Usually it was clocks. In a town like Ludlow, on a night like this, it ought to have been clocks.

She reached up and felt for the ridge of the tiny cross under the fleece and the T-shirt, pressing it into the cleft between her breasts, and heard a voice, hollow with pain.

Might have been just an owl inside the castle grounds. Or, a moment later, two distinct species of owl in sequence: the breathless fluting of the woodland tawny overtaken by an ethereal screech – barn owl. That was all, that was—

As she was plunging into pockets for the cigarettes and the Zippo, it started up again, bloating into something swollen and visceral that wasn’t like any kind of owl but definitely like a woman.

Then a harsh, white shriek.

‘TAKE ME!’

The castle wall was caught by a blade of moonlight.

‘TURN ME!’

Merrily stood looking up, frozen. The jagged windows of the Hanging Tower were holes in mouldy cheese,

‘TAKE ME, TURN ME… TEACH ME…

‘PLOUGH ME, PLY ME, PLEACH ME!’

The words seemed to be crawling up the wall.

‘TAKE ME, RAKE ME…’

She knew it, of course. It was from Nightshades. It was twenty years old.

When it stopped, the air was alive again, as if the night was frayed and abraded.

And from below the Hanging Tower, the same voice, only different. Soft and breathy, ethereal.

Wee Willie Winkie running through the town

Upstairs, downstairs, in his nightgown

Rapping on the—

A stifled sob. In the distance, Merrily heard a car horn, the furry rumble of an aeroplane. And then there was coughing and the voice came back, husky and earthen and bitter.

‘You lie like carrion…’

And then rising, fainter and frailer but spiralling up again like pale light.

‘… I’ll fly like Marion.’

Mumford

THE DOOR WAS on a chain, a strip of light sliding out over the concrete landing and her teeth bared at him in the gap.

‘Never get the message, do you? You’re not wanted yere, you was never wanted. Got nothin’ to say to each other. Not at half-past one in the morning, not any time.’

Half-one? Was it really? How time flew when you were plugged in again.

Aye, he’d accept it was a bit late to be calling on even your closest living relative. But he’d seen the lights on, guessing they stayed up half the night and then went to bed till the afternoon: the half-life of the worthless.

‘Just wanner talk a while, Angela,’ Mumford said calmly. ‘En’t gonner keep you more’n half an hour. Just some things I need to get sorted out.’

‘Well, you can fuck off,’ Ange said through those guard-dog teeth, ‘and you leave us alone from now on. I don’t wanner see your fat face ever again, yeah? Clear enough?’

Mumford nodded. Fair play, he’d started out politely enough, telling her he thought he should inform her it was Mam’s funeral on Tuesday and listening, without comment, to the expected response – not even bothering to wipe what had accompanied it from his face. Being imperturbable.

He could smell the spliff from here, knowing that the reason Ange instead of Mathiesson had come to the door was that Mathiesson would be busy flushing it all down the toilet in case Mumford wasn’t on his own. Probably a few ounces of blow wasn’t the half of it, but when the boys raided the estate they’d likely let this particular flat alone, thinking mabbe this family had suffered enough and Mathiesson was only small-time, anyway. Bliss could be thoughtful, on occasion.

‘Well,’ Mumford said, like his feelings were hurt, ‘if that’s how you feel, en’t much more I can say.’

Backing off as he spoke, his eyes on the tension in the chain, and when he saw it go slack as she was about to slam the door in his face, he turned his shoulder and met it with the full force of his fifteen and a half stone.

Ange’s screech was simultaneous with the splintering of wood as the chain came away, pulling out a wad of cheap Plascarreg door frame, the door flying back and Mumford going in there fast, grabbing her as she spun away, desperate to stop her falling because she was, after all, pregnant.

Holding her arms tight to her side, he manoeuvred her backwards into the living room. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of making her scream again, but he held on because, if he slackened his grip, she’d have one of his fingers between her teeth before he knew it.

She was her father’s daughter, was Angela.

Mumford gave her the heavy-lidded, level stare.

‘’Fore you says a word, I’ll pay for it, all right? I’ll leave a hundred on the table when I go. And you can tell that scum he can stop flushing, ’cause I en’t remotely interested in what he puts up his nose tonight.’

Ange breathing through her teeth, eyes black with what Mumford took as hate. He went on staring into them, imperturbable.

‘All right?’ He saw her mouth working on the saliva, and he gave her a little shake. ‘No. Now you listen to me… no, listen!’

‘Your level now, Mumford, eh?’ Mathiesson standing in a doorway, stripped to the waist. ‘Pregnant woman?’

‘You wanner dispense with the heroics, boy, seeing as we’re in your place and it’s all your stuff that gets broken?’

Looking at the stuff in here, this was no bad deal he was offering. Sony TV size of a double wardrobe, screening some slasher-horror DVD with the sound down. Had to be ten grand’s worth of hardware. A subtle hint here that Ange and Mathiesson were existing on a bit more than the sickness benefit from Mathiesson’s famous bad back.

Mumford thought about Robbie Walsh’s broken neck and his snapped spine, and a surge of the old volcano went through him, and he caught himself hoping that Mathiesson would try and take him. But Mathiesson didn’t move and Mumford turned back to Ange.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘either I holds on to you the whole while, or we all sits down nice and quiet and you answer my questions, in full. On the basis I en’t a copper no more and nobody gets nicked, or—’

‘We got nothin’ to say to each other no more,’ Ange said. ‘Not that we ever had much.’

‘—Or I go down the station at Hereford and have a chat with a few of my old colleagues. Who’ll mabbe see to it that you’re a single parent, for a while, this time around.’

Ange looked at Mathiesson, and Mumford kept on looking at Ange. She was wearing a red towelling robe, the wide sleeves falling over his hands where they gripped her arms.

‘You’re hurting me,’ Ange admitted.

‘Your decision.’

‘He’s on his own,’ Mathiesson said. ‘No witnesses.’

Mumford let Ange go and moved away quickly and went to stand next to the Sony. Ange sat down on the big cream sofa, rubbing her arms, then pulling her dressing gown tight across her chest, not looking at him. Mumford turned to Mathiesson.

‘You ever work – if that’s the word – at the old Aconbury Engineering factory, Lenny? Edge of the Barnchurch?’

‘Never heard of it,’ Mathiesson said.

‘I see. So that’s gonner be the level of our conversation, is it?’

‘It’s closed down.’

‘Well, aye, been closed down eighteen months, far as engineering goes. Far as preparation and distribution of crack goes, it was turning a tidy profit until… oh, the day before yesterday?’

‘If I was involved, I’d’ve been arrested, wouldn’t I?’

‘Well, mabbe it’s not over yet, that part,’ Mumford said, and Mathiesson’s jaw twitched.

Ange snatched the remote from the arm of the sofa and snapped off the TV.

‘Thank you,’ Mumford said. ‘Now I’m gonner come clean, Angela. I’m gonner be dead straight with you. Wasn’t the ole lady responsible for what happened to Robbie.’

‘Look,’ Ange said, ‘I was upset that night. What you expect? I was lashing out.’

‘’Course you were. And you were in shock. But you were lashing out at the wrong person. Only one member of this family’s responsible for the boy’s death, and it wasn’t an ole lady with rising senile dementia.’

‘I’m pregnant!’ Ange yelled. ‘I get tired. I didn’t have no time—’

‘I mean me, Angela,’ Mumford said. ‘I was responsible. Me.’

For the first time, Ange shut her mouth.

‘I could give you a lot of bloody excuses about pressure of work, but the fact is there wasn’t much pressure at work that last week. No point in giving a man cases he en’t gonner be able to see through to a result. Truth was, I just didn’t wanner hang round with my family, ’cause that looked too much like the future. First time, I didn’t pick Robbie up, start of his holidays, and take him over to his gran’s. Know why? ’Cause I couldn’t face the ole man leering at me – one of us, now, boy, a pensioner. That’s why.’

‘Ole man never had no tact,’ Ange said. ‘Anyway, we put Robbie on the train. Lenny took him down the station.’

‘Normal way of it, see, Robbie and me, we’d have a chat on the way there. Hard goin’ sometimes, mind.’

‘Hard goin’ for anybody,’ Ange said, low-voiced, eyes downcast. ‘Unless you was a professor of history.’

‘Truth of it was,’ Mumford said, ‘Mam told me at least three time how the boy couldn’t wait to see me. I didn’t understand. I thought she was finding me a bit of retirement work. Child-minding.’

Clenched his fists, hearing his mam on the phone.

Robbie, he wants to show you all his favourite places in the town, don’t you, Robbie? He’s nodding, see. He’s always saying, when’s Uncle Andy coming?

‘I never went. I was angry. Insulted. Scared, too. Scared of the future.’

‘Couldn’t throw your weight about no more, eh?’ Mathiesson said. ‘Couldn’t kick the shit out of nobody when you was feelin’ a bit frustrated. You poor ole fuck.’

‘Shut up, Lenny,’ Ange said quietly.

‘Now I know exactly what he wanted to talk to me about,’ Mumford said. ‘Question is, did you?’

Ange said nothing.

‘I been for a chat with some people tonight, see. Former neighbours of yours. The Collinses.’

‘Collinses are as good as dead,’ Mathiesson said.

‘Not the wisest response, Lenny, you don’t mind me saying so.’

‘Thought you said this was off the record.’

‘It is. But see, there was someone else knew what was happening at the old Aconbury Engineering factory. I’m saying factory – not much more than a workshop, really, a starter-factory. Nice secluded site, though, since they stopped building any more due to nobody wanting to run a business so close to the Plascarreg. Nice quiet site, next to a little pine wood.’

‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’

‘Or mabbe there was a funny feeling about the place,’ Mumford said. ‘Being as it used to be the site of the civic gallows. Or, at least, that’s what some folks reckon.’

‘You lost me way back.’ Mathiesson came into the room, draped himself over the back of the sofa, started playing with Ange’s hair.

She shook him off. ‘This is Robbie, en’t it?’

‘What’d he tell you?’ Mumford said.

‘I never took much notice.’ Ange sat up, holding her dressing gown across her throat. She looked cold, though it must’ve been ninety degrees in the room. ‘He… got on your nerves, sometimes, poor little sod. Yeah, I do remember he was real excited – few weeks ago… months maybe, I dunno. Said did I know they used to hang people round the back of the flats. Said he’d worked out where it was.’

‘There’s still a mound, apparently, on the edge of the pines. It was covered over by trees until they started extending the Barnchurch. That’s the most likely site.’

‘I didn’t take much notice. He was always going on about something – usually it was something in bloody Ludlow, so I never even took it in. I probably only remembered this because it was yere.’

‘Told his mate Niall Collins all about it. Niall said, you don’t wanner go messing round there, they en’t gonner like it. Doubt if Robbie even took it in, what the boy was trying to tell him. All these years he’d hated the Plascarreg because – not just because it was tacky and run-down, I don’t reckon he even noticed any of that – but because everything was so new. Now at last here’s some real history on his doorstep. Wasn’t nothing gonner keep him away.’

‘I don’t even know where he got that idea from,’ Ange said.

‘The gallows? Local history venture, Angela. Somebody got a Lottery grant to run a local history project in the South Wye area of town. You probably didn’t notice.’

‘Yeah, we… something came through the door. Robbie took it.’

‘This?’ Mumford reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, brought out a printed pamphlet: South Wye History Project. ‘It was with his stuff. Project starts end of May. They were asking for volunteers to help produce a booklet on the history of the area. According to Niall, Robbie seems to have met one of the archaeologists in charge, who made him copies of old documents, and Robbie started doing his own research. Either he found the old execution site or he didn’t, but poking around that workshop with a spade night after night, threatening to bring the whole team down for a dig…’

Ange shut her eyes, began softly pummelling her knees, going, ‘Shhhhit, shhhit…’ very quietly.

‘I don’t suppose they’d understand what the boy was after,’ Mumford said. ‘Mabbe somebody else had a quiet word with him – told him seriously to keep away. Somebody like Jason Mebus. He afraid of people like Jason, Angela?’

‘You’d think he would be, wouldn’t you?’ Ange looked up. What he’d taken for hate just looked like tired black circles around her eyes. ‘Truth was, I don’t reckon he even noticed them. He just went his own way. Read his books, messed about on his computer and went off on his own.’

‘Seems to me,’ Mumford said, ‘that Robbie’s enthusiasm for history and the past and that stuff would prove stronger than any quiet warning to stay away.’

‘So bloody innocent, he wouldn’t even have known what they was on about.’ Ange started to cry. ‘I never had time…’

‘You know what they done, finally, to make him understand?’

Ange shaking her head, hands over her face. Mumford stopped and turned away. Saw someone walking past the window, not four feet away from where he was standing. No getting away from anybody here. This was what Niall’s dad, Mark Collins, had told him; it was like being in a cell block, but without any prison officers to protect you.

As soon as he’d left that house, Mumford had realized that he’d finally blown it. By now, Collins would already have talked to Bliss or somebody less sympathetic about the lone cop who’d come to question young Niall at their temporary home in Malvern.

They’d never asked to see Mumford’s ID. Nobody ever had, even when he’d carried a warrant card. Wasted exercise; Bliss had once said Mumford looked like a copper the way a sheep looked like a sheep.

Just hoped he hadn’t dropped Karen in it.

‘What I think,’ he said to his sister, ‘is Robbie tried to make them understand how important it was, this discovery he’d made – actual site of a Middle Ages gallows. Showed them a picture of it in this book he had. Somehow, the relevant page got ripped out. Niall remembers Jason Mebus had that page.’

‘What page?’ Ange looked at him through splayed fingers. ‘I don’t—’

‘Picture of a gallows on it,’ Mumford said. ‘Or a gibbet. Picture of a feller being hanged. And a detailed picture of a working model.’

And he decided there and then that he wasn’t gonner say any more about this aspect of it. Poor bloody Ange. She’d been a crap mother, but it was clear enough now that she hadn’t known any of this. Whether Mathiesson had and had chosen to keep quiet about it was something to be considered later. For now… well, there’d be enough shadows over Ange for the rest of her life without the details Mumford had finally got out of Niall Collins – the kid refusing to talk about it until Mumford had applied the kind of emotional pressure that had brought Mark Collins and his wife rushing in and would undoubtedly be relayed to Bliss and probably Annie Howe.

Which was why Mumford couldn’t go home until this was finished.

‘What I wanted to ask you,’ he said, ‘was how well known was it that Robbie went to Ludlow during his holidays?’

Ange looked up at Mathiesson, his tattoos gleaming with sweat.

‘Don’t look at me – I never told nobody. Why would I?’

‘It en’t far to go, is it?’ Mumford said. ‘My original thought, see, was they was just bullying him ’cause he was a bit of a swot, didn’t fit in. And mabbe they made his life such a bloody misery that he couldn’t bear to come back yere and so, last day of his holidays—’

‘Stop it!’ Ange started rocking from side to side, holding herself and Robbie’s unborn sibling. Mathiesson straightening up in shock, suddenly getting the point.

‘They wouldn’t! Shit, they wouldn’t kill him, Mumford, just keep him quiet… wouldn’t top him just to keep him out their hair…’

‘Mabbe it was an accident, Lenny. Mabbe they just wanted to put the fear of God into him. But, then again, I always said it was only a matter of time with Jason Mebus.’

‘The Collins boy told you this?’

‘It don’t matter where I got it from. But what you got with the likes of Mebus, see – and wossisname, Chain-boy, Connor – is kids who’s up here with the excitement of it. Wanner prove themselves as hard men. You been through that phase, surely, Lenny…’

Mathiesson said nothing.

Ange said, ‘If you think Lenny had anything to do with it, you’re wrong.’

‘And I’d like to think I was,’ Mumford said, ‘for your sake if nothing else.’

‘He had every reason to keep Robbie alive.’

‘Ange…’ Mathiesson gripped her shoulders. ‘There’s no need. He en’t a copper no more. You don’t have to—’

‘Sit down, Andy,’ Ange said, real quiet.

34 Old Stock

WHEN THE SINGING stopped, Merrily was aware that the warm night and the foliage had come alive, but not with foxes or badgers or bats or rats.

Unease made her stop on the edge of the path, looking all around her. Over her shoulder the top of the church tower was visible, its weathercock spiking a cluster of mushroom-coloured night clouds. And somewhere, although the singing had stopped, she could hear voices, rushing through the undergrowth like blown leaves. When a giggle crept up behind her, she spun round. Shadows were moving among the bushes, skidding feet.

A girl’s voice squeaked, ‘No, Nez, don’t!’

What sounded like a beer can bounced off the castle wall, and somebody shouted after it, ‘Mad ole slapper!’ and Merrily became aware of a bunch of them at the side of the track, about ten yards away. She felt a glow of very basic fear. But it couldn’t be the women who had attacked Bell; these were just kids.

Just kids.

We had some awesome laughs with Robbie.

‘What do you want?’ Her voice coming out cracked and coarsened by twenty years of smoke. She started to cough, muffled it with an arm.

A kid said, ‘Whossat?’

‘Police,’ Merrily said, with determination. ‘This path is closed. Now push off, the lot of you, or you’ll be banged up for the night.’

‘Aw, get lost, you’re not the police.’

‘Then you’ll be able to pretend in the morning that you’re not having your breakfast in a cell.’ Remembering the mini-Maglite torch she’d stuffed into a pocket of her jeans before leaving the car, she started fumbling under her fleece. ‘Now, do you want to go in the van or—’

The little torch was bugger-all use for hitting anybody, but it was very bright. She flashed it at head height, found a girl in a shocking-pink top who looked about thirteen, and the girl squealed and backed off, stumbling.

A boy said, ‘You’re never protecting that mad ole slapper, are you?’

Then, ‘Oh, no!’ the girl was wailing. ‘My heel’s gone! Nez, you bloody wuss, I told you I didn’t want to come down here.’

‘I’ll carry you…’

‘Oh, get—’

‘What’s going on?’

Outrage and a yellow light, probably from one of the cottages in The Linney.

‘Shit,’ one of them whispered. ‘It’s my grandad. Sorry, OK? We’re off now. We just wanted to see if it was true, all right? We’ll leave you to it. Goodnight.’

‘Erm… yeah… Goodnight.’ Merrily smiled.

She switched off the flashlight, waited until it was quiet again and the light in The Linney had gone out. We just wanted to see if it was true. How often did this happen?

She put the torch on again, twisted the neck until there was just a thin beam, directing it at the ground, following it along the track until it found the fat bole of Marion’s yew tree. And Bell Pepper sitting under it, in silence now, with something across her knees, her elbows resting on it and her face between her hands, a small light at her feet.

‘I don’t want protection,’ she said.

‘You’ve been getting it, anyway.’ Merrily switched off the torch. ‘For a long time.’

‘Oh.’ Bell Pepper turned her head. ‘I thought I… it’s Mary, isn’t it?’

‘I’m sorry, I followed you. Didn’t like to think of you going back out there after what happened.’

‘It was very stupid of Jonathan to phone you.’

‘He was worried, too. Can we talk?’

Merrily sat down next to her, between the roots. The space under the yew’s dense canopy was lit like an earthen grotto by the candle in the lantern, and she could make out Belladonna’s once-famous patrician profile, recalling an album cover where her face had been sprayed with creamy white plaster, eyes calmly closed, like a death mask.

‘Children,’ Bell said. ‘I expect I was some kind of goddess to their parents. Now I’m a mad old slapper.’ She gazed out between the trees towards the invisible river. ‘When they’re spraying your name three feet high on walls, you never imagine that one day you’ll be…’

Normal, Merrily thought. Ordinary. It was odd – she’d always thought that Lol was the exception in his line of work because he seemed, in spite of everything, so normal. Odd how you could be taken in by the intentional mythologizing of rock musicians.

‘Maybe in ten years’ time those kids’ll think you’re a goddess, too,’ she said. ‘Tastes change rapidly in music. And then they bounce back again.’

‘How would you know?’

‘I was a fan. I came to one of your gigs once. And my boyfriend’s in the business.’

‘Business?’

‘Music. He plays. Writes songs.’

‘You poor cow. Would I have heard of him?’

‘I don’t know. Lol Robinson? OK if I smoke? Tobacco, that is. I’m feeling a bit…’

‘Go ahead. Christ, I remember Lol Robinson. Hazey Jane? They put him away, didn’t they?’

‘Psychiatric hospital.’ Merrily found the Zippo and the Silk Cut packet, crushed, in her fleece. ‘He fell into the system.’

‘OK now?’

‘He always was.’ Merrily held out the cigs to Bell. ‘You do nicotine these days?’

‘Only vice I’ve ever given up, Mary.’

Merrily lit up, inhaled and let out the smoke on the back of a sigh. It was not comfortable, sitting in the dirt at the foot of the yew.

‘But not, I assure you,’ Belladonna said, ‘because I didn’t want to die. That would be…’

‘Positively hypocritical, in your case.’

Bell laughed. ‘Am I right in thinking you and Jonathan are…?’

‘God, no.’

‘That was emphatic.’

‘I told you, I have a boyfriend.’

‘How quaint. Is he as quaint when he’s on tour?’

‘He’s so quaint that old ladies want to buy him.’

‘I see.’

‘You?’ Merrily lowered the cigarette; the smoke was making her bad eye smart.

‘Me, what?’ Bell said.

‘Jonathan?’

‘Makes you think that?’

‘I think he’s awfully interested in you.’

‘Most men are. But some are also frightened, and he, I suspect, is frightened.’

‘Jon?’

‘Just because he looks like a mad biker with a taste for rape and plunder… Actually, on reflection, most men are scared. And most women hate me. And children peer at me from behind the bushes.’

‘Except…’ Merrily snatched a shot of nicotine and went for it. ‘Except for Robbie Walsh?’

Belladonna looked at her, full face in the shivering candlelight, and Merrily saw that her mouth was slightly twisted, blots of dried blood on her jawline, dirt still scraped across one cheek, a pinkening lump on her forehead above the proud, aquiline nose.

Ludlow is my heaven.

Oh God, something was very wrong here. This woman was not normal. Merrily became aware of the garment that Jon Scole had described as a nightdress. It was probably satin. Shapeless as an operating gown. She glimpsed a ribbon under one of Bell’s arms.

Merrily tightened up, gripping her knees.

Bell said slowly, ‘Who told you about Robbie and me?’

‘Couple of people who saw you with him. Around the castle.’

‘I gather some people have been saying he committed suicide. And therefore I must have helped him nurture his depression.’

‘Who’s saying that?’

‘He wasn’t depressed. Absolutely not. Robbie Walsh would walk these streets in a state of near-ecstasy. Jonathan’ll confirm that. He was happier than any child I ever saw.’

‘While he was here.’

‘Yes.’

‘Because he was here. He had a passion for history.’

‘A passion for Ludlow. And your interest in him is…?’

‘I have a friend who was his uncle. He feels he… he feels more than a bit responsible.’

‘We all feel that.’

‘Did Robbie come here with you? To this tree?’

‘Oh yes. I think he was very much in love with Marion.’ Bell leaned her head back against the tree, stretching her neck. The garment was torn on one shoulder, strands of the white fabric making loops. ‘Schoolboy crush. If Robbie was going to have his first crush, it would have to be someone from the Middle Ages, wouldn’t it? Only a small part of him was living in the present. You know what I’m saying, don’t you?’

‘I think we’ve all experienced it.’

Bell let out a small, exasperated hiss. ‘I don’t know about you. Only what Jonathan’s said, and Jonathan’s prone to the most awful hyperbole.’

‘I think,’ Merrily said carefully, remembering Jane’s advice, ‘that we all have heightened experiences in a town this close to its own history.’

‘Yes.’

‘And although I never met Robbie Walsh…’

‘He’d describe scenes to you… like a sighted person interpreting for the blind. He’d read the names on all the plaques outside the old houses so many times that he knew them all off by heart – by heart, Mary, the town was in his heart. He knew who’d lived in every house, and he’d describe them to me. And he’d come here and he’d describe Marion.’

‘Oh? What did she look like?’

‘Quite small. Brown hair, brown eyes – passionate, angry eyes. Robbie was an adolescent boy, he wasn’t sophisticated, his terminology was simple. He was in love with Marion because she was everything you rarely find any more. She was… all feelings. All strong passion and impulse, in comparison with all the apathetic, jaded kids he had to mix with. Can’t you feel her, Mary? Now? Here?’

‘I can feel her confusion,’ Merrily said, and it was true. ‘I can feel her uncontrollable rage. And her despair.’

‘This was possibly the time of night she did it… hacked the bastard down and took a dive. Out of the window just above us. No tree here then, just stones. Marion plummeting down with a scream of terminal anguish. Her body bouncing as it lands, breaking, finally coming to rest—’

‘Coming to unrest,’ Merrily said.

‘—Where we’re sitting now, blood issuing from her mouth.’ A fluid thrill, like oil, under Bell’s voice now. ‘Oh, you do understand, don’t you?’

‘I understand Marion. Marion’s easy. She was both the betrayed and the betrayer. She’d let the enemy in. She didn’t see a way out, except through one of these windows. Jemima Pegler, however… that’s much more complex. And so’s Robbie Walsh. This friend of mine, he took me to see his mother, Robbie’s gran. Because she said she was seeing him around the house and around the town…’

‘He asked you to help her, as a psychic.’

‘Something like that. She said she was seeing Robbie reflected in mirrors and shop windows. And… in the water.’

‘She drowned…’

‘I was there that night,’ Merrily said. ‘And you came down to the river, with a bunch of… goths, it looked like.’

Bell stared at her, her arms in the ragged sleeves lifting what had lain on her knees – a black instrument case, too big for a violin, too small for a guitar.

‘And you seemed to know who it would be,’ Merrily said. ‘Who they’d found in the water.’

‘What are you suggesting…? Oh, look, all right… It was one of the band heard it was Robbie’s grandmother. Couple of them were in the town, and they heard someone—’

‘The band?’

‘It’s a young band, called Le Fanu, who come here sometimes. They’ve been influenced by my music and they come down some weekends and we play. They’re… my support mechanism, if you like. We hang out and we get a little stoned sometimes and… we’re putting an album together. Look, I hear stories that I’m flooding the town with fucking goths, but it’s just Le Fanu and their hangers-on.’

‘And was… one of them involved in a stabbing incident?’

Something squirmed, some creature, rattling twigs in the undergrowth on the other side of the path. Bell let out a breath.

‘Yes, yes… He was a roadie, and he doesn’t work for them any more. It was a very minor incident, I…’ She hugged the case. ‘… I don’t mind being considered mad – I am mad – but I won’t be accused of importing violence, do you understand?’

Her voice was breaking up now and she was trembling.

‘You’re shivering. You’re cold.’

‘I like being cold, you must’ve heard that. Cold as the grave.’

‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘Mary, are you writing a fucking book about me, or something?’

‘I’m—’ Merrily had to break off, take a breath. The cigarette lay dead between her fingers. Her spine was starting to ache, and her bum had gone numb. If she wasn’t careful she was going to come out with the truth. ‘I just think some of the things being said about you are probably all wrong. Jon—’

‘Jonathan’s an idiot. Him and his ghost-walk – irrelevant, an irritant.’

‘Maybe you just want to be an enigma,’ Merrily said. ‘The mad woman of Ludlow who walks in the night and sings her old songs to the moon while sitting under this… age-old symbol of life and death and immortality, wearing… wearing a bloody shroud…’

Bell Pepper started to laugh. ‘I really think you’re the first to notice.’

Oh God, and she’d been hoping it wasn’t. She stared out, past the lantern, at the ominous black forestry across the river, towards the Welsh border.

‘I didn’t think they made them like that any more. They seem to use paper now, or the body’s dressed in ordinary clothes.’

‘They don’t make them like this any more,’ Bell said. ‘I had a friend, an undertaker. He found them in a stockroom. Six of them. Old stock. Years old, even then. Probably post-Victorian, nineteen-thirties, I don’t know.’

‘I see.’

‘This was the guy who did the arrangements for my baby, if you were wondering.’

‘Your baby died…?’

‘My baby… had no life outside of me. When they pulled him out, he was dead meat.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No need to be. It works both ways. Ever since – over twenty-five years – a part of me has been where he is.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Merrily said, ‘I’m going to have to stand up, my back’s starting to seize up…’

She rose awkwardly and walked out of the penumbra of the yew. She was surprised to see the sky like deep copper foil over the Hanging Tower. It didn’t mean dawn, just another mood of an increasingly crazy night.

‘Do you want to come home with me, Mary?’

Bell Pepper was at her shoulder, the musical-instrument case at her feet, her hands around its stem.

‘I… I’ve got a daughter at home, I…’

‘How old?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘Hardly a problem, then. You’re obviously not as comfortable here as I am. Come back to The Weir House.’ Bell touched her arm. Her fingers felt like the wet tips of icicles. ‘You want to know, don’t you? About Robbie?’

Merrily didn’t reply.

‘I was entirely shattered when he died.’ That dark, translucent voice, the poshest pop star since Marianne Faithfull. ‘It was like – for me – some awful kind of retribution.’

Merrily turned to her. ‘Why?’

‘Because Robbie Walsh was my son,’ Bell Pepper said.

35 A Resort for the Dead

THE PHONE WAS ringing. Jane woke up under the duvet on the sofa in the parlour, Ethel on her feet. She was fully dressed, more or less. Padded through to the scullery.

The clock said two-fifteen a.m. She’d unplugged the answering machine, so the phone was still ringing, and she snatched it.

‘Mum?’

‘Jane…?’

‘Lol!’

‘What’s wrong?’ Lol said.

‘Wrong?’

‘All the lights are on. I’m sorry, I’m becoming the neighbour from hell. Maybe it’ll be better when I get a bed. I woke up on the sofa and I felt something wasn’t right, and I went to the front door and… all the lights are on in the vicarage. Well, not all the lights, just… more lights than usual. Sorry.’

‘She got called out to Ludlow. Belladonna was… assaulted.’

Jane explained. She was wide awake now. Waking up had never been a problem and she thought it was good, in one way, that Lol had noticed the lights. He cared.

Well, of course he cared.

‘She left her phone behind. I don’t think it was intentional, she was in a hurry. But I’m a bit pissed off, actually. I was supposed to be going with her tomorrow to sort out Belladonna.’

‘She was going to expose Belladonna to you?’

‘Maybe she senses I’ve mellowed. Do you want to come over for some hot chocolate or something, Lol? We could sit by the phone together.’

‘Not a safe thing to do in this village at the moment, with your mum conspicuously not at home. If we’re awake, someone else will be. Then you happen to trip up outside and cut your lip, and I’m back on Victoria Ward, and—’

‘Lol!’

‘You could give me a discreet call when she comes in. Or do you think I should maybe go over—’

‘Certainly not!’

‘You’re right. That would be… intrusive. Unforgivable. I need to keep my nose out.’

‘You don’t like Belladonna, do you?’ Jane said.

‘I don’t know her.’

‘You don’t trust her, then.’

‘Well, not from what I’ve heard, no, but we shouldn’t always believe rumours, should we?’

‘No. Lol’ – Jane sat at the desk, flicked on the anglepoise ‘– about that. The rumours. Do you have any idea who’s been spreading them?’

‘Not really. As long as the right people don’t believe them, I’m not going to worry.’

‘You heard from Q magazine yet? When the piece is going in?’

‘Should I have?’

‘You could ring them and ask.’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t like to miss it.’

‘Eirion gets it, doesn’t he?’

‘Yeah. So he does.’

‘Is this small talk, Jane?’

‘Bit late for that,’ Jane said ambiguously.

With no chance of getting back to sleep, Jane made some hot chocolate and took it back to the computer. Put Belladonna into Google and found, like, six million mentions. Put in Belladonna/religion and got it down to a couple of thousand. What it seemed to amount to was that this woman had tried everything and rejected most of it, including forms of paganism, mostly eastern.

When she found herself back in the Departure Lounge with Karone the bastard Boatman, Jane typed in: You still here, Karone? Suggest consult own website and act accordingly.

She Googled The Weir House, where Belladonna lived. There were three mentions, two negligible, one cursory. Essentially, a new house created authentically on the site of a fourteenth-century ruin, with a connection to the Palmers’ Guild. Jane Googled the Guild and came up with this fairly detailed article about a quasi-spiritual organization that had played a major part in making Ludlow what it was today – well preserved and not short of a few quid.

She printed it out and read it twice. It tied in fairly well with what she already knew, from A-level history, about the medieval social system – the need for wealth, status and godliness in equal measures. Like, forget all that rich man/eye of the needle crap; if you had the money you could provide for an afterlife. Jane was reminded of ‘Stairway to Heaven’, the ancient and interminable Led Zeppelin song that Eirion had in his anorak’s collection. Apparently, Tony Blair knew all the chords. Figured, somehow.

She tried Belladonna/Ludlow and hit on a short item from one of these Heat-type celeb magazines, which included this little gem:

‘Do you know how many ghosts there are in this place?’ Bell has been saying to friends. ‘Dozens. Everywhere is haunted. This town is like a resort for the dead.’

She printed this out, too, sensing some significance here, and then checked the e-mails. There was one from Eirion, marked For Jane.

Cariad: If you get this before you go off to play pagans, I couldn’t sleep, due to underlying blind rage, so put some checks in, and I’m 99% certain JDF and Q are not any kind of item. I’m now going to find out where he lives so as to plan dawn raid. Well, OK, half-elevenish raid. Will keep you informed.

The e-mail was timed at 1.55 a.m. Chances were he was still vaguely conscious. Jane rang his mobile.

‘Yes, I’m very nearly naked,’ Eirion said. ‘And, sadly, alone. Are you in bed also, your body glistening with oriental oils?’

‘You sound pleased with yourself.’

‘I’ve found out where the shit lives. It’s one of those Georgian piles behind a ten-foot wall at Breinton, overlooking the city.’

‘So you’ll be going through Ledwardine to get there.’

‘No.’

‘Just that the Ludlow trip could be off.’

‘Does this mean I don’t get to do something potentially rewarding all on my own?’

‘You can do what you like after you switch the light out, but maybe you could call for me in the morning. I feel strongly about this, too. Lol’s my… whatever you call the bloke your mother’s having an unaccountably clandestine relationship with. And he’s… he’s taken enough shit this week.’

‘You told Lol about Fyneham?’

‘No. Not a word. I mean, let’s find out what the score is first. Like, if it turns out you’re wrong and the guy actually is working for Q…’

‘Jane, I went through a pile of back copies, looking for the name Jack Fine in all the concert reviews and small stuff, and then every known music website. I put him into every available search engine. If Fyneham’s working for Q, I’m going to leave school, get a job on a remote hill farm in Snowdonia and shag sheep.’

‘Yeah, OK, we get the point.’

‘Call me when you know if you’re going or not?’

‘I will do that.’ Jane noticed a new e-mail for Mum from the Deliverance office. It was highlighted with one of those red exclamation marks, conveying urgency. Sophie, who knew Mum always checked her e-mails before bed.

‘If I don’t hear from you before ten forty-five,’ Eirion said. ‘I’ll just go straight over there, OK?’

‘And, like, will you be armed?’ Jane said.

She put the computer to sleep and went to the window. A fox was standing in the dark garden, as though embossed on the wall. Jane didn’t move either; foxes were cool. She supposed she ought to grab a couple of hours’ sleep. Flushing out Fyneham would be second-best to penetrating Belladonna’s lair, but still better than an average Saturday.

And then the phone rang and the fox sloped away towards the orchard and the churchyard.

Mum, this time. ‘What on earth are you doing still up? I was going to leave you a message on the machine.’

‘Running the switchboard. You left your—’

‘Phone. I know. Jane, I’m just… it doesn’t look like I’ll be back till the morning, OK?’

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Yes, everything’s fine.’

‘You sound like you can’t talk.’

‘Well, there you are, then.’

‘Somebody’s there?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Right.’ They’d become good at this over the years. Jane focused on the computer’s hypnotic lemon sleep-light as it swelled and faded like a nervous sun. ‘Could this be Belladonna? You’re with Belladonna, in person?’

‘Very intuitive, flower.’

‘Is she mad?’

‘Bit early to say. Definitely before lunch.’

‘I mean, you’re not in need of help?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘So where are you exactly? Like, where are you going to sleep? Are you going to sleep?’

‘Well, just a bit… weary. Been a long day.’

‘Wow… you’re at The Weir House?’

‘Exactly. So get some sleep yourself, all right?’

‘Oh, I forgot…’ Jane leaned forward and revived the computer. ‘There’s an e-mail from Sophie, marked urgent. You want me to read it?’

‘Quickly, then.’

‘OK, one sec…’

Merrily, this came just before I left, from a secretary at Lackland Modern Furnishings. The attachment is a scan of a petition received by the Mayor of Ludlow this afternoon. It was marked for your information (by the Mayor, this is). Hard to say if it’s important or merely an attempt by someone to pre-empt your inquiries and perhaps pressure you into unnecessary action, but I thought you should see it.

‘I’m opening the attachment, Mum, OK? If it’s a virus, you know who to blame. Uh-oh.’

‘What?’

‘Looks like the fundamentalist loonies are on your back again.’

to the mayor of ludlow, County Councillor G. H. Lackland.

Sir,

A GREAT GODLESSNESS.

It has come to our notice that you have been in discussion with the diocese of hereford with regard to recent tragic events at ludlow castle. we are glad that, as our first citizen and a practising christian, you have shown such commendable regard for the spiritual and moral health of the community and trust that you will support our call for suitable action to remove what many townsfolk regard as the shadow of darkness and dissolution.

with respect,

(followed by 443 signatures)

‘Notice that “shadow of darkness”,’ Jane said. ‘As distinct from a shadow of light. Who wrote this turgid crap?’

‘Well, thank you, flower,’ Mum said. ‘That’s made my night.’

‘But what do they mean? OK, you can’t… I understand. Anyway, if that’s the worst thing that happens to you before dawn you’ll be OK. But, like, if I was having to sleep in Belladonna’s house, I’d make sure my bedroom door was well locked.’

36 The Legend

IT SMELLED OLD: this was what you noticed first. Because the trees around it made everything so dark and close, and there was a night mist down here near the water, there wasn’t much to see until you were inside, where the smell met you: the dusty sweetness of woodsmoke and warm stone, like the balm of a small church.

Even when Bell put on the lamps, it remained dim. An entrance hall with a low ceiling. The beams, Merrily noticed, were rough-cut, retaining an element of bark. Two lanterns projected from the swollen, ochre walls – electric, but the bulbs were no bigger than match flames, and so the room was no brighter than it would have been in the Middle Ages, lit by candles or rushlights.

The phone was in a niche in the wall, like an aumbry for the sacrament. But this was evidently for the concealment of an anachronism, and Bell drew the short curtain back across it.

‘Your daughter was still up, then?’

Bell Pepper was faintly haloed by the clay-coloured light. She’d brushed her fair hair and washed her face. It looked pale and puffy, like creased linen, and there were shadows under her eyes, but no blood – except down the front of the shroud, like an emblem of war.

‘She was waiting for me to call,’ Merrily said. ‘She’ll go to bed now.’

‘My son was born dead,’ Bell said bluntly. ‘He died inside me.’

Some belligerence there. This was a famous-artist thing: you demanded privacy, railed against media intrusion, but it was important that people should realize that your experiences were always more dramatic and significant than theirs.

‘I was dreaming a great deal, then.’ Bell’s voice softening, a hint of the years in California rolling in like surf. ‘Lucid dreams in which I was walking the streets of an old, old town, and I had no body. I was light.’

Merrily said nothing. Hormonal. So many chemicals at work during pregnancy.

‘And during this really vivid dream, Mary – a dream full of colours and the scent of woodsmoke – during this dream, I was aware of someone beside me, and I was so sure that my baby had died.’

‘Yes, I… can understand that.’

‘And yet I didn’t feel the way you’d expect.’ Bell smiled – those crossover teeth, what Lol had called that strange kind of uneven beauty. ‘No sorrow, more a kind of… Come and have some wine, Mary.’

‘Well, it’s a bit—’

But Bell had moved away through a low Gothic doorway, coffin-shaped around her, and Merrily shrugged and followed her into a passage that was low and narrow and unlit, sensing this woman’s smile moving ahead of them like a guiding light, something separate.

‘It was more like a kind of awe,’ Bell said, ‘that I was carrying death inside me. That I was containing death. That death had happened inside me. I knew from that moment that I’d always have death with me. And that death is like love… it must be nurtured.’

Turning to face Merrily at the end of the passage. Even in the gloom, Merrily could see that Bell’s eyes were alight.

‘But, you see, Mary, I was never very good at love.’

Merrily stopped in the passage. Beginning to see everything now, the whole purpose of this woman’s cycle of ritual: the candles burnt in ancient, sacred places, the menstrual blood in the church… the shroud, her magical apparel on a ghost-walk from the yew outside this house, over the spiritual summit of the town, to the yew in the overgrown cemetery of St Leonard’s that was humming and rustling with energy.

‘Death is eternal life without pain,’ Merrily whispered. ‘We make our own eternity.’

There was a momentary silence, except for the small sounds of a sleeping fire in the space behind Belladonna, where there were glimmerings of red and orange.

‘You know,’ Bell said, in a kind of awe.

They’d walked from The Linney, down some steps under the castle wall, like descending from the high town into the country.

Once, a sensor had found them and set off an imitation Victorian gas-lamp in the tiered, tree-snuggled garden of a modern bungalow, and Bell Pepper had stopped and turned around, with the musical-instrument case held by her side. Her shroud had a high, ruffled neck and came close to the ground where her feet were in sandals. She seemed, for a moment, to be flickering in time, and that was when Merrily had had the first inkling.

Soon, the buildings were separating out, town houses giving way to farmhouses, brick to stone, walls to high hedges, viridian-grey under the egg-shaped moon. The pavement narrowing, so Bell was walking some way ahead of Merrily, the pale shroud like a waving handkerchief.

There were stone gateposts at The Weir House drive and high, iron gates. But a smaller gate to the side had been unlocked, and Bell had led Merrily into a pathway which took them not to the house but to a yew tree which the path encircled. The yew was the width of one of Gomer Parry’s diggers, very softly floodlit from below, green and gold. Like so many in churchyards, it was the remains of a long slow implosion, the great tree serving up its own entrails in a blackened tangle of pipes, like a ruined church organ.

Bell had walked inside.

Not uncommon to find them alive and hollow; there was one at Much Marcle with a seat inside. Merrily had hung back, didn’t want to go inside the tree with Belladonna. Emerging a few moments later, Bell had stepped back and bowed to the tree and walked away, with no explanation.

But she hadn’t been carrying the instrument case any more, only a long key.

‘That was quite a shock.’ Bell laughed nervously, a glass of red wine at her lips. ‘I thought for a moment— But I suppose Jonathan told you, didn’t he? He was here when we rehearsed it. That particular line – we make our own eternity – is on the album, the thing I’m doing with Le Fanu. Which we haven’t yet recorded. Jonathan was dropping so many hints I let him in once to listen – special treat. Little bastard, I expect he was making notes.’

‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ Merrily said. ‘Jonathan didn’t tell me.’

The laugh was snapped off, and then Bell, face glowing in the firelight, said, with uncertainty, ‘There is no other way you could—’

‘Yes, I’m afraid there is.’

There was what looked like half a small tree on the fire in the great stone hearth. There must have been some draught system under the hearth because Bell had awoken the fire, and they were sitting in its sporadic light in these hopelessly uncomfortable oak chairs, no more than carved wooden boxes with vertical backrests and the fronts blocked in like commodes. Velvet cushions helped a bit, not much. Bell leaned out of hers.

‘But of course Jonathan maintains you’re the best natural psychic he’s ever encountered. I was inclined not to believe him. Jonathan is… how shall I…?’

‘Prone to hyperbole.’ Carving on the chair’s upright spine bit into Merrily’s back. She sat up, sinking her hands into the pockets of her fleece. ‘Mrs Pepper, I read it on the Internet.’

‘I don’t know anything about the Internet!’ Bell’s voice rose erratically. ‘Computers suck your energy. You couldn’t have!’

‘The quote was on a website. Well, more of a chat-room.’

‘I don’t even know what a fucking chat-room is.’

‘It’s like a forum. Where people can send messages to each other? In this case, people interested in suicide.’

‘What?’

‘Where would-be suicides gather to talk it over online. It was quoted in a reply to someone who was planning to take her own life. I couldn’t tell you where they got it from, but the Internet moves almost as fast as you can think. Passing thoughts suddenly get shared with thousands of people.’

Merrily looked around into the darkness. They might as well have been sitting outside in front of a brazier. This would be a very atmospheric rehearsal room, but as living space, despite the heavy tapestries on the walls and the sheepskins on the floor, it was too big, too cold, too rudimentary. Too starkly, uncompromisingly medieval.

Bell Pepper was watching her intently over her wine glass. ‘Why were you looking at this suicide website?’

‘I was trying to help my friend, Robbie’s uncle. I wanted to understand Robbie and why he died.’

‘You think he committed suicide?’

‘His uncle thinks it’s possible. What do you think?’

Bell’s face went blank. ‘I don’t know.’

‘He seems to have been victimized – bullied – on the estate where he lived. There’s evidence that he didn’t want to go back. That he took his life to… stay here…’

‘No, that’s not true.’

‘So we looked at his computer and he—’

‘No! Listen… I didn’t put that stuff there. Yeah, yeah, there’s a computer here that Le Fanu use – for the music, they download sounds, sample stuff, I don’t know how it works, I don’t have to, I’m not an Internet freak like fucking Bowie… and I didn’t put those words out, or any of that song… I didn’t.’

‘I never said you did,’ Merrily said. ‘And, for what it’s worth, there’s no evidence that Robbie went near those sites. But, since I’ve just quoted that line back to you, somebody must have, mustn’t they? Did one of the band do it – Le Fanu? Your songs appear to be widely available on the suicide network, did you know that?’

‘It’s nothing to do with me. Anybody could… Everybody knows what I did.’

‘Sorry, I’m getting confused, what are we—?’

‘It’s in the books. The unauthorized biographies.’

‘I’ve never read them,’ Merrily said. ‘I just know the music. I just… wore the clothes.’

‘When I was fifteen,’ Bell said, a tired incantation, ‘I tried to kill myself. I took an overdose. I spent quality time on a stomach pump. I was fifteen and I was overweight, bad skin, repressed and horribly shy, and I had a heart defect and I was not allowed to do games and my parents drove me everywhere – even if I went out at night with friends they drove me there and collected me – and I also had a disgusting brace on my twisted teeth, so I tried to kill myself. It’s in the books.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know about that.’

Bell craned her neck forward. ‘Darling, it’s part of the legend. The next part is when I was seventeen and someone said I could sing and someone else pointed out that if you took the middle out of my dreary name, Isabella Donachie, you had the magic word Belladonna – poisonous, the most resonant name for a singer in those days – and that seemed like some glorious epiphany, and I snatched the brace off my teeth and slept with about a hundred men in six months.’

‘Legend?’

Bell sniffed. ‘You see, I’d grown up to whispers behind my back: doctors to parents, parents to relatives. Peering through the banisters, ears flapping – children have such sharp ears and an acute understanding of the basics. By the time I was ten, I knew I was going to die before my time.’

‘You’re still here…’

‘And I still have a heart defect, apparently – it wasn’t a mistake or anything: they picked up on it again when I was having the baby. I mean, I could still die any time. I just haven’t died yet. But death and me…’ Bell enclosed one hand with another. ‘Close, Mary. Very close, always. And it’s been a remarkable relationship.’

‘It’s certainly produced some remarkable music.’

‘All about sailing close to the precipice. When I swallowed the pills, I was convinced just a handful would finish me off – someone already hanging delicately over the great abyss? Didn’t happen. When I was twenty-one, I recorded the Hungarian Suicide Song and had all the scratches put into the mix, just like the original. Singing close to the precipice.’

Merrily said hesitantly, ‘They say that knowledge and acceptance of death can show you how to live… intensively.’

Bell leaned back in her box. ‘That’s not quite true. It induces, more than anything, a sense of the temporary. I couldn’t settle. Couldn’t settle in a place – travelled all over the world or, at least, back and forth across the Atlantic. Couldn’t stay with a man, either. Pepper was the best, he was a nice guy – why I kept his name – but I was turning him into a nervous wreck, so he appealed to my better instincts and I let him go. But there was only one constant, and that was my son.’

‘Because he was dead?’

‘And then I fetched up in Ludlow, visiting Saul’s daughter, Susannah, who was now my legal and financial adviser – business manager, I guess – and it was… another epiphany.’

‘The town you’d dreamed of when the baby was…’

‘Yes. Knew it soon as I got out of the car. Didn’t quite believe it at first, so I went away. Had the dream again. Came back, and the pull was even stronger. A town that, like me, was outside of its time. And the child… well, the child wanted to come back.’

‘Are we talking about… Robbie?’

‘You’re getting there.’ Bell sighed. ‘I must be insane – you could be a reporter.’

Merrily smiled.

‘But when you’ve been courted and worshipped and shafted by thousands of people the world over, you pride yourself on being able to recognize the ones who’re going to be of some importance. When I saw you with Jonathan at Marion’s yew, I thought, yeah… No, don’t say anything, Mary, don’t feel flattered, I’ll be a burden to you, I always am.’

‘Robbie?’

‘Is my son. Is my son. I wasn’t looking for a child, for God’s sake. I was probably looking for a man. And then one day you’re face to face with your twin soul, and it’s a… a bloody little boy.’ Bell drank some wine, tears like lenses over her eyes.

‘Someone I spoke to,’ Merrily said, ‘actually said you were like mother and son.’

‘We were mother and son. Birth parents are merely that – seldom of any consequence, an impedance more often than not. We were part of the same spiritual seed… essence. And we were both connected with this town and realized it. We’d both come home. We saw the town burning with the same golden light. I remember, in my first dream, walking from the castle to the church, stopping and gazing up at the steeple, and it was like a bar of gold, and the sky was red with sunset, and I felt… well, you can imagine how I felt.’

‘Euphoric.’

‘Oh, well beyond euphoric.’

‘Like a near-death experience? Bell, are we talking reincarnation here?’

Bell shook her head. ‘I don’t believe in that shit.’

‘Someone… that is, I wondered if you felt you were connected with Marion de la Bruyère.’

‘No, not at all. Marion’s an entry point. She’s important because most of the ghosts here are nebulous presences, and she’s fully formed. We know where she died, and how and why. And she’s very much here – like Robbie. So I went to see his grandmother.’

‘Mrs Mumford?’

‘When he’d gone back to school, last January, I went to see the old woman. Realized, soon as I started talking to her, that there was no way I could explain the half of it. I said I was impressed with his knowledge and his enthusiasm and wondered if there was some way I could help with his education. It was pretty clear that she wouldn’t understand.’

‘Would you have expected her to?’

‘Probably not. So, in the end, I went to see the mother. I went to this crummy estate in Hereford. And I met the mother. And it became very obvious, very quickly, that this woman and I would be able to find a common… currency.’

‘Currency?’

‘I’m not speaking metaphorically. Look at this place… it’s a shell. I walk through this house like another ghost. I wanted…’

Merrily sat up, hard. ‘You wanted to adopt him?’

‘My stepdaughter could deal with the formalities. But the essence of it, as far as the mother was concerned, was a large – not to say life-changing – one-off payment.’

‘Christ,’ Merrily said.

‘He didn’t know. I wanted to be sure, before I discussed it with him, that nobody would get in the way. It was obvious Phyllis Mumford wouldn’t be in any state to look after him for much longer. As for Angela… Angela’s eyes positively lit up at the implications.’

‘God.’

‘And then he died,’ Bell said. ‘He died like Marion. And everything shifted. The whole axis of the town shifted under me.’ She stared at Merrily, and her eyes looked as if they were melting in the firelight. ‘It’s the endgame now, Mary.’

The fireplace reared over them. Bell was in shadow, but her breathing was loud and uneven, and you could smell the wine.

‘This is the endgame,’ she said again. ‘It’s as if we’re all part of some great, tragic tapestry across time. And now I’m walking this house and this town like a ghost. Like the ghost…’

‘Like the ghost,’ Merrily said softly, ‘that you’ll become?’

37 Like in the Belfry

WHILE JANE WAS in the kitchen, scrambling a basic breakfast together, the phone rang in the scullery.

‘Put your mother on, please, Jane.’

‘She’s not here.’

‘Well, get her,’ Sophie Hill said.

It was about half-nine. Outside the scullery window, the first blossom was ghosting the apple trees, although the sky was dull. Ethel was sitting on the wall, watching for movements among the graves in the churchyard.

‘Not so easy,’ Jane said. ‘She went over to Ludlow last night, and she’s not back yet. And, of course, she forgot her mobile.’

‘Oh my God,’ Sophie said. It was Saturday, so she was probably calling from home. ‘She’s there now?’

‘What’s the matter?’

Sophie drew breath as if she was about to explain something.

‘Sophie? Is there something wrong? Something I can tell her if she—?’

‘Thank you, Jane,’ Sophie said and hung up.

And Jane was worried now because Sophie was worried – conspicuously.

A woman not known for displaying unwarranted emotion.

Lol had been up for a couple of hours when Gomer Parry arrived at the back door.

Gomer had a small boy with him – about ten, fair hair, combat trousers.

‘Tell him,’ Gomer said.

The small boy looked at Lol, then over the fence into the orchard. Then he tried to run past Gomer into the entry that led back into Church Street.

Gomer caught him. ‘Tell him.’

‘Get off me, you ole paedophile!’

‘We gonner do this the easy way, boy, or the hard way?’ Gomer said. ‘Either you tells this man what you did or we goes and talks to your dad.’ He looked across at Lol, who was standing in the doorway. ‘His dad’s on the Hereford council – Lib Dem, hangin’ on by his fingertips last time. Hate it to get out that his boy was in the poison-pen business. Now tell the man.’

The kid looked at the step Lol was standing on.

‘Posted you a letter.’

‘I see,’ Lol said. ‘And did you, er, write the letter?’

‘Tell him,’ Gomer growled.

‘Yeah,’ the kid said. ‘But I din’t make it up. He told me what to write.’

‘Who tole you?’ Gomer said.

‘Bloke.’

‘What bloke?’

‘I don’t know! I keep tellin’ you and you don’t believe me. He give me a quid both times.’

‘How much?’

‘Fiver.’ The kid looked up at Gomer. The light flared in Gomer’s glasses. ‘Tenner. To keep quiet.’

‘So let’s get this clear, boy. Bloke gives you the paper, tells you what to write on it, then he puts it in the envelope, tells you where to take it, right?’

‘Yeah. When it’s dark.’

‘What do he look like, this bloke?’

‘I dunno – tall.’

‘Local?’

‘Uh?’

‘You seen him before round yere?’

‘No.’

‘Was he in a car?’

‘Yeah.’

‘All right,’ Gomer said. ‘You see him again, you come and tell me. You know where I live – bungalow down the hill, with the big sheds.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You tell me quick enough, mabbe I’ll give you a tenner. Or mabbe I just won’t tell your dad. Now bugger off.’

When the kid had gone, Lol said, ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Paedophile – you yere that? Bloody hell, it don’t take the little bastards long, do it?’

‘How did you find out about him?’

‘Maggie Tomlin – lives across the way. Sits in a wheelchair by the window, listenin’ to the radio. Knows everybody. Jasper Ashe, her says, straight off. Thought he was delivering flyers for a car boot or some’ing, but he only delivered the one. Gavin Ashe’s boy. Gavin had Rod Powell’s ole seat on the council, but the Tory woman run him close last time, see.’

‘I don’t get it, Gomer.’

‘Ar, it’s a puzzler,’ Gomer conceded. ‘Somebody got it in for you and the vicar, but they en’t local. But mabbe you’re supposed to think they are local.’

‘Making me paranoid. Unsettled.’

‘Sure to, ennit.’

‘Well… thanks, Gomer.’

‘Us incomers gotter stick together,’ Gomer said.

‘Er… yes.’ As Lol understood it, Gomer had been born approximately ten miles outside Ledwardine. ‘Right.’

‘Where’s the vicar?’

‘Over in Ludlow.’

‘Been out all night, looks like.’

‘Er…’ Lol heard his mobile from inside the house, playing the first few bars of the tune that Jane had keyed in – ‘Sunny Days’.

‘You better get that, boy, might be her.’

‘It might.’

‘You wanner keep an eye on that little woman,’ Gomer said. ‘Some funny folks in Ludlow now, what I yeard.’

The next caller had asked for Mrs Watkins. Jane hadn’t recognized the voice, but it was too precise to be, like, Emma from Everest Double-glazing or somebody in Delhi calling on behalf of British Telecom. This voice was also actually quite low and pleasant.

‘Would that be… Jane?’

‘It would, yes.’

‘Jane, this is Siân Callaghan-Clarke. Canon Callaghan-Clarke, from Hereford.’

‘Oh, hello.’

Big warning bells, up close and agonizingly loud, like in the belfry on a Sunday morning.

‘Jane, I’m awfully sorry to bother you, but it’s most important I get hold of your mother before… other people do.’

‘Other people?’

‘The media, for instance.’

‘She’s pretty good with the media, actually.’

‘Yes, so I understand. Do you know where she might be? Does she routinely tell you where she’s going?’

‘You mean, like, am I a latchkey kid who gets her own meals?’

Siân Callaghan-Clarke laughed lightly.

‘Actually, she normally tells me everything,’ Jane said, ‘but I’m afraid I got in rather late last night myself – the bus broke down – and I, um, overslept. She’s usually up very early, on her hands and knees, scrubbing the church floor, or visiting the sick, and I’m afraid I have to go out again in a minute, so…’

‘Hmm.’

‘I could leave a note for her.’

‘You’re sure she hasn’t gone to Ludlow, Jane?’

‘Ludlow.’ Jane paused. ‘That’s in Shropshire, isn’t it?’

‘Thank you,’ Siân Callaghan-Clarke said. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

Mistake.

‘So something’s gone down,’ Jane said to Lol. ‘And I don’t know what it is. And Mum hasn’t rung and I can’t get hold of her because bloody Belladonna’s ex-directory. And Eirion’s gonna be here any minute to pick me up.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Maybe you could come over to the vicarage and just like… stay here? Man the phone and stuff?’

‘You think I’m responsible enough?’

‘Please, Lol, it really is the best thing you could do right now. Something’s happened, and I don’t know what it is. I’ve got the radio on – Hereford and Worcester – and there’s nothing. Lol, please…’

In the dream – and she knew all along that it was a dream – Merrily was at a junction of several old streets with gilded buildings on either side. They had timbers like bars of dull gold and small bricks like jewels, and the entrance of each street, as she approached it, was aglow with enticing lights, the air perfumed with applewood smoke. But the further in she went, the darker and closer it all became, the brickwork crumbling, the beams blackening and the perfume gradually corrupted by a rising stench of dampness and rot. And ahead of her – slapping of sandals on dry flagstones – a woman with a musical-instrument case swinging like a censer from one hand.

Scared, Merrily began wading out of the dream. She opened her eyes, and one of them hurt. The light was grey and rationed, sweat congealing on her face like a sour syrup. She pushed the plain cream duvet away, tentatively lowered her bare feet to bare boards.

No splinters on this floor. This was very old wood, worn smooth long before it had been laid here. Could have come from anywhere. Had its own history.

The Weir House. Hundreds of disparate histories mingled here, their vibrations filtered through reclaimed timbers and the stones of demolished barns from miles away and nothing would be—

God, what time is it?

In bra and pants and small pectoral cross, she stumbled across to the only window, a Gothic slit with just one pane, and peered out.

She saw a short track with a metal gate at the end. There was a flat field, a glint of river and, above it all, sprouting out of the wooded bank and a sky that was as cold and hard as marble, something like a ragged and monstrous clump of giant brown mushrooms.

Use the castle room. Bell Pepper opening the door for her but not entering. An engaging smile through twisted teeth. But if you see Marion, be careful. She’s unstable.

Merrily had not wanted, at that time, to see Marion. She remembered sitting down on the bed, alone, to think and to pray: St Patrick’s Breastplate – Hold me safe from the forces of evil. On each of my dyings shed your light.

Must have slept, for… She went back to the bed. The rest of her clothes – T-shirt, jeans, fleece – were in a heap beside it, her watch on top. It was nearly eleven-thirty a.m. She’d slept for nearly six hours.

She had to start talking to people – Jane, Lol, Mumford, the Bishop.

Recalling a bathroom somewhere, mercifully modern, she grabbed her clothes into a bundle and unlocked the oak door – yes, it did have a key and she had locked it – and went out into a short passage that was daylight-dim: interior lime-plastered walls of wattle and daub, which was basically clay and cow muck over a framework of branches and twigs. Clay and cow muck and animal fat and whatever other personal ingredients—

Merrily stopped, clutching the bundle to her chest. The woman standing at the end of the passage was not Belladonna.

38 Like Hello!

BREINTON WAS ON the western side of Hereford in sloping, wooded countryside that managed to conceal most of the city’s lower, more modern buildings, so that from the road outside the Fyneham residence you could see the cathedral apparently poking out of greenery, as if the city centre was a neighbouring village.

Eirion parked his Peugeot half on the grass verge, just out of sight of the solid wooden gates that were like castle gates: all you could see of the house was a brick wall, a chimney and a burglar alarm. Homes up here cost an arm and a leg now.

‘Hereford’s Beverly Hills,’ Jane said sourly. She was seriously uptight, the world full of invisible hostility. If she’d been a hedgehog she’d have been rolled up in a ball, spikes out.

‘If that’s meant to be an insult, it would escape Fyneham.’ Eirion locked the car. ‘He’s a Beverly Hills kind of person. How do you reckon we get to the front door?’

‘You need one of those little battering-ram things the cops have.’

‘Jane…’ Eirion was looking at her as though she might have been secretly carrying one. ‘Don’t do anything, right? Leave this to me.’

‘You know me, Irene.’ Jane put on an icy smile. ‘Walking definition of the word discretion. Look – dinky little door in the wall.’

There was a black iron ball-handle; when Eirion turned it, the door opened onto a short gravel drive and this imposing, blindingly white conservatory porch with a Victorian type of bell pull that turned out to be electric and sent Big Ben chimes bonging through the house.

The woman who responded was serious second-wife material: bleached blonde, about thirty-five, and dressed for hovering hopelessly with hi-tech secateurs. She stayed inside, keeping a hand on the door, Eirion treating her to his winning smile.

‘Oh, hi. Sorry to just turn up like this, but Jack said if we were ever passing…’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘This is the right house, isn’t it? Jack Fyneham?’

‘Jack?’ She looked blank for a moment and then she said, ‘Oh, you mean Johnno.’

‘Actually, we just know him as JD at school.’

‘Oh, I see, you’re—’

‘This for me, Tessa?’ J.D. Fyneham appeared in person at her shoulder, wearing a half-smile that faded with gratifying speed into this oh-shit expression when he saw who was outside. Jane smiled at him.

‘Why don’t you take them up to your rooms, Johnno?’ Tessa said. ‘I’ve got this guy coming about the pool, which your dad, of course, conveniently forgot about…’

‘Cool.’ Eirion beamed. ‘JD’s told us so much about his rooms.’

In the first hour, nobody rang. Lol went upstairs to Merrily’s bedroom and brought down the Washburn he kept there and tuned it and played fingerstyle to Ethel, the way he had when he’d lived in Blackberry Lane and Ethel had been his cat and he’d probably still been half-mental.

Walking across to the vicarage, he’d seen a woman looking at him and then she’d frowned and looked away and Lol had thought, Jesus, no… and put his head down and almost run across and into the driveway. Jane, in the doorway with Eirion, waiting to leave, had glared at him with a kind of furious pity.

And now there was a knock on the front door, and he put down the guitar and didn’t know whether or not to answer it.

Someone had paid a child twenty quid to write and deliver two anonymous letters, the latest accusing him of beating up his half-secret girlfriend, the parish priest. No smoke. Not everyone would believe Gomer Parry. He envisioned a drab lynch mob of Ledwardine villagers clustered around the porch: What have you done with the vicar?

He closed his eyes and held his breath. Immediately Lucy Devenish sprang out of the shadows, and he almost reeled back from the draught caused by the admonishing swirl of her poncho: Sitting there listening to your mournful, wistful records. It’s spring! Open your heart to the eternal! Let the world flow into you!

‘Mr Robinson.’

Just one man at the door. Close-cropped red hair and a blue plaid jacket.

‘Ah,’ Lol said.

‘Now, don’t think we’re targeting you now you’re a successful recording artist, but experience has taught us that many of your kind still like to conduct experiments of a chemical nature in order to, shall we say, stimulate the creative juices.’

‘So how much do you want, Frannie?’ Lol said. ‘Couple of grams see you through the graveyard shift?’

Frannie Bliss beamed. ‘How are you, Laurence? Can I come in?’

‘Well, you can,’ Lol said. ‘But she’s not here.’

‘That’s a shame.’ Bliss stepped inside, followed Lol into the kitchen. ‘Hoped I’d catch her. My day off, strictly speaking, but, with having to go over to Leominster to see Gail Mumford, I thought I’d call in.’

‘I haven’t spoken to Merrily this morning. I’m just here kind of minding the phone.’

‘She’ll be in Ludlow, then, will she?’

‘Why would you say that?’

‘You know anything about that peculiar business?’

‘What?’

‘Let’s deal with Merrily and Mumford.’ Bliss rubbed his forehead. ‘Lol… being straight with each other now can only save a lorra serious pain later. Had a call at home this morning from Karen, my new DC. You won’t have met her. Karen’s current headache is being second cousin, twice removed, to Mumford, who seems to have forgotten he’s no longer permitted to hit people with his truncheon, as it were. Basically, Karen’s feeling guilty because, for reasons of Family, she’s been doing PNC checks for him and divulging things she shouldn’t have.’

‘Family,’ Lol said. He didn’t seem to have one any more, outside of Merrily and Jane.

Bliss sat down at the pine refectory table. ‘It’s bloody lucky I understand how this area operates. This got passed up to headquarters, Karen’d be ironing her uniform tonight. How much do you know about the Robbie Walsh business?’

‘I just live a quiet life, Mr Bliss,’ Lol said, ‘writing my little songs.’

‘But you do have the ear of the Reverend. And other bits, too, it’s rumoured. Lol, let me put it this way: Andy Mumford was a fine detective, with a good nose. But once you’re out, you’re out, and Andy’s crossed a line you do not cross.’

Bliss talked about a family on the Plascarreg Estate, name of Collins, who were being looked after by the police after fingering several drug dealers. They had a son, Niall, formerly associated with some youngsters who, it seemed, had not been nice to Robbie Walsh.

‘I had Karen looking after them. There was a message for her this morning, to ring the Collinses at their safe-house. Seems they’re not too happy about this strange copper who turned up to talk to Niall, in some detail, about Robbie Walsh and things that got done to him. Drugs are one thing, but the Collinses are sincerely hoping their son’s not gonna be called to give evidence against his former playmates on this one. For reasons that may become apparent.’

‘Have you spoken to Mumford?’

‘Laurence… this is the whole point: we can’t find Mumford. His wife says he went out yesterday, saying he was finalizing arrangements about his mother’s funeral, and didn’t come back. He phoned – would you believe? – a neighbour, asking her to convey to Gail that he was OK.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘He doesn’t like confrontation. And whether he thinks we…’ Bliss shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know, Lol. He’s not himself. Or maybe he is himself, and he shouldn’t be any more, because he’s fuckin’ retired. Gail is, consequently, frantic. Gail knows how he’s been lately and how far he might go.’

‘Compulsory retirement’s like a jail sentence in reverse, and probably just as stressful,’ Lol said. ‘He’ll have something to prove, if only to himself. Maybe he won’t feel able to come home until he’s done it.’

‘I agree,’ Bliss said. ‘But it’s worse than that. OK… our colleagues in Shropshire had Robbie down as accidental death – no evidence to the contrary, no suicide note, no one else involved they knew of. Mumford seems to have thought there was more to it, and this was getting to him.’

‘Because he thought, as a copper, he should have seen it and stopped it.’

‘Exactly. And it looks like he could be right. Knowing what we now know – thanks, it seems, to Mumford – there’s reason to think the lad was so terrified of going back to the Plascarreg he topped himself.’

‘And what is the reason to think that?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘And frankly I don’t really want to know,’ Lol said. ‘But it might help Merrily.’

‘You think he’s still in contact with her?’

‘None of us is in contact with her – she went out without her phone. The thing is… Do you want a cup of tea, Frannie? Glass of cider?’

‘No, ta. I want to know what the thing is.’

‘I can’t tell you that,’ Lol said.

Bliss smiled. ‘Bastard.’

Lol shrugged.

‘All right,’ Bliss said. ‘You first.’

‘She went out with Mumford to the Plascarreg, and she got hurt.’

Bliss half-rose. ‘She got hairt?’

‘Bruised face. Black eye. Some kids. Mumford found Robbie’s computer, and they were seeing what he had on it there – in this garage. These kids evidently thought there might be something on the computer that could incriminate them, so they… smashed it. Mumford got attacked, and Merrily was hurt trying to get some kid off him. Kid was trying to choke him with a chain.’

Bliss leaned back, breathed down his nose. ‘And she didn’t report this incident to me because…?’

‘Because of Mumford.’

‘Don’t.’ Bliss stood up. ‘Don’t say another word, Laurence. I encounter Mumford, I’m likely to nick the bastard meself. I just urge you, if you talk to Merrily, and she’s in contact with him, to tell him to…’

‘Give himself up? I mean, what’s he actually done?’

‘Impersonated a police officer.’

‘Impersonated himself, in fact.’

‘It’s what he could do,’ Bliss said.

‘To whom? I think I need to know, don’t I?’

‘Yeh,’ Bliss said. ‘All right, I’ll have a glass of cider, please. This looks like being a long day.’

‘Holy shit!’ Eirion said. ‘You bastard.’

Somehow, Jane had expected him to have calmed down since last night, but it was clear that his usual chapel-whipped, Welsh-speaking caution had failed to re-engage. What if going out with her had fatally damaged his equilibrium?

Still, she could see that J.D. Fyneham’s home office, occupying the upstairs of what seemed like a whole wing of a very sizeable house, was something to inspire strong feelings – envy, lust, that kind of reaction – in the male of the species.

The room was dotted with pinpoint lights and underlaid with a low hum. It had this blue-mauve ambience, from concealed lighting with daylight-quality bulbs. Most of the stuff in here, Jane was unsure what it actually did. There were three computers – one was an Evesham, and they didn’t come cheap – on plush, kidney-shaped workstations, a cluster of printers and scanners and other hi-tech-looking items of hardware which seemed to be connected with… well, desktop publishing, she guessed.

Like, on an industrial scale.

‘You could…’ Eirion seemed to be having respiratory problems. ‘You could produce bloody Vogue up here.’

‘Pays its way, Lewis, pays its way,’ J.D. Fyneham said.

The way he kept calling Eirion ‘Lewis’, it was like that sneering way that Inspector Morse talked to Sergeant Lewis on the TV. He was wearing a deep purple rugby shirt and black trousers in this kind of snakeskin leather.

‘That’s all you need to know,’ he said. ‘Now what do you want? I’m busy.’

‘Obviously,’ Eirion said bitterly.

‘Look, we were a bit pissed last night, all right?’

‘It’s not about last night,’ Eirion said.

Jane had wandered over to a side table stacked with A4-sized glossy magazines. The top one had a picture on the cover of a black and white village that she was sure she ought to recognize. Beside the magazine was a stack of flyers.

‘Come away from those!’ Fyneham snapped, but Jane had grabbed one.

Do YOU want to make your parish magazine into a genuine going-concern – a professional publication that every parishioner will want to buy?

‘Well, well…’

‘It’s a legitimate business,’ Fyneham said sulkily.

‘Jane?’ Eirion walked over.

‘JD seems to be the guy behind Parish Pump, Irene. It offers a service to vicars and parish councils, to turn their parish magazines into, like, Hello!’

‘Oh, please,’ Fyneham said. ‘I’m offering to teach them the basic craft of journalism.’

‘I don’t know anything about this,’ Eirion said.

‘He probably hasn’t hit Wales yet. Mum got the package, but decided people wouldn’t want to see pictures of the parish council in the nude and, like, read about the churchwarden’s private habits.’

‘You may take the piss,’ Fyneham said, ‘but seven parishes have already signed up for the introductory package.’

‘And what does that do for them, exactly?’ Eirion said.

‘They learn the basics of journalism. How to spot a story, how to write it. I spend a couple of weekends in the parish and sub the first issue for them. Or produce the whole thing, for a fee. It’s a shit-hot idea, Lewis, and it’s working. If a parish magazine looks halfway decent, local businesses are more inclined to advertise, and they can charge more for display ads. That way they get the new steeple before the rest of the church falls down.’

Jane was forced to concede that it wasn’t such a bad concept.

‘You do it all yourself?’

‘So far, but I expect I’ll soon be able to employ some of the guys from the media studies group on a part-time basis. Not that Lewis would be interested…’

‘This is all your dad’s kit?’ Eirion said. ‘He produces real glossies – trade stuff, right?’

‘Nah, this is just overspill. He’s got a proper plant down in town, with a few staff.’ Fyneham shrugged. ‘We help each other out.’

There was a noticeboard at the end of the long room, with some magazine covers pinned to it: Microlite Monthly. You and Your DigiCam. The Clinical Therapist. International Readers’-Group Forum. What Hereford Council Can Do for You.

All crap, really.

‘Tell the truth, the old man hates what he does,’ Fyneham said. ‘He’d rather be a real journalist any day of the week, but real journalists don’t have a pad like this with five acres and a pool. It’s swings and roundabouts, Lewis. The old man goes on about secure income. If I have this to fall back on, I can go out there and, like, soar.’

Eirion looked faintly contemptuous – but then his family had been loaded since for ever. Jane started to wonder if Fyneham would maybe give her a weekend job. Hadn’t earned a penny of her own since the maid thing at Stanner Hall.

But then she remembered why they were here.

‘Does your dad own Q, then?’

Fyneham stared down at her, eyes narrowing. She noticed a faint sheen on his face, above the weekend stubble that Eirion said some guys in his year started cultivating from about Wednesday.

‘We’re talking about Lol Robinson,’ Eirion said.

‘Aw…’ Fyneham shuffled out this crooked grin. ‘Look, maybe it’ll get in, maybe it won’t.’

‘You’re saying you did it on spec?’

‘You’ve never done that? Written a piece for a magazine and just sent it in, see if it gets used?’

‘Can’t say I have, JD.’

‘Scared of rejection, huh? I’ve had quite a few pieces published – OK, not in Q yet, but some of the others.’

‘Fanzines?’

‘Oh, better than that. Look, somebody tells me about this guy who’s just brought an album out and how he used to be halfway famous, way back, and how he used to be a mental patient with a police record. Burns me a CD. Like, I don’t personally go for that acoustic shit, but I get onto the Net, dredge up some background and think, yeah, I’ll go and interview him.’

‘You told him you worked for Q,’ Eirion said.

‘I told him I was a freelance. What’s wrong with that?’

‘You told him it was definitely going in,’ Jane said.

‘I told him I couldn’t be sure when it would go in. And I couldn’t.’

Jane looked at Eirion. He was red-faced and tight-lipped and looking far younger than he had when he was smarming the second wife at the door. It was all turning out to be no big deal; just another wannabe chancing his arm. OK, a wannabe with a head start… well, a head start on Eirion, anyway.

She wished they’d never come now. She wished she was in Ludlow with Mum. She wished they could just get out of here.

‘Anyway, it wasn’t fair,’ she said to Fyneham, more for Eirion’s sake than anything. ‘Lol Robinson’s a really decent guy, with a lot of talent, and you conned him.’

‘You won’t say that if it makes it into the magazine.’ Fyneham knowing he was on top now, his grin turning into a sneer or maybe it had been a sneer all along. ‘Anyway, why should you be worried about the guy being conned, when he’s beating the shit out of your mother?’

A few seconds later, Jane was hearing Eirion saying, like from a long way away, ‘Jane, no…’

But it was like when she’d tried on Mum’s new glasses: the whole room had gone red – all the printers and the binders, and the scanners and the copiers and the state-of-the-art flat-screen computers.

Including the big, handsome one that she was holding in her arms, maybe sixteen hundred quid’s worth, its cables wrenched out of their sockets and dragging along the carpet as she backed away towards the window.

Fyneham snarling, ‘You’re insane! You’ll be paying for that for the rest of your—’

‘It fell off the desk,’ Jane said through her teeth. ‘Our word against yours. Keep away from me, you scumbag!’

She tripped over an extension cable and had to go down on one knee to prevent the computer slipping out of her arms, and Fyneham let out a screech.

‘For Christ’s sake, Lewis, do something about this bitch!’

‘Out of my hands, JD.’

‘And it’ll be out of mine,’ Jane said, ‘if you take one more step.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want to know where you got it from.’

‘Got what?’

‘You know what. You’ve been trying to bullshit us all along. You think we’re like hicks or something, and you’re this big-time professional journalist…’

‘I don’t know what you’re—’

‘You…’ Jane hefting the computer above the level of her chin: further to fall, more damage. ‘You do!’

‘Put it down!’ Fyneham like went into spasm. ‘Put it down and we’ll talk.’

‘We’ll talk first.’

‘It’s not paid for, you stupid bitch!’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Look,’ Fyneham said, ‘I was just told what to ask, OK, and he bought me—’

Eirion came over then, and Jane clutched the computer to her chest in case he snatched it. But he just stood between her and Fyneham, who looked close to tears, Eirion just looking puzzled.

‘Bought you what?’

Fyneham looked down at his trainers, arms stiffened, fists clenched by his sides.

‘The Evesham.’

‘Your dad bought you the Evesham?’

‘He bought it, and I’m paying him off week by week. My dad… he came up the hard way. He doesn’t do anything for nothing.’

‘But he got you the Evesham if you asked Lol some questions?’

‘He’ll kill me.’

‘Is that what happened?’

‘Lewis, will you please tell that bi— your girlfriend to put it down?’

‘Could you put it down, Jane?’

Jane stood for a few moments trying to work out what was coming out here, when all she’d wanted to know was who’d told Fyneham this evil crap about Lol giving Mum the black eye.

‘Jane?’

She looked into Eirion’s worried eyes, and picked up what they were saying: If you drop that thing now, we’ve lost it…

… Whatever it is.

She carried the big computer across the room to the nearest table to the door and let it down slowly, keeping her hands on the base in case she had to snatch it up again. This was a relief, frankly, but it was Fyneham who nearly sobbed.

‘All right, let’s go right back to the beginning, JD,’ Eirion said.

Bliss said there were some small factories, not much more than workshops, on the edge of the Barnchurch industrial estate. Not the halfway respectable part, where the shops and warehouses were, but at the rough end, where it joined the Plascarreg.

Only one of these had ever been let. A light-engineering plant there had gone bust fairly soon, but a ‘small business syndicate’ on the Plascarreg had paid the tenants to pretend otherwise and sublet part of their unit for the preparation and distribution of crack cocaine and other commodities.

It was a relatively foolproof arrangement, and nobody had ever disturbed this enterprise until Robbie Walsh discovered that the site to the rear of the workshop was of archaeological importance, being a one-time place of execution.

Such was Robbie’s enthusiasm for first-hand knowledge of the past that he was disinclined to take ‘Piss off, son, and forget all this exists’ as a useful piece of advice. And so particular youngsters on the estate were encouraged to take an interest in Robbie and his leisure pursuits, to the extent of borrowing some of his books.

‘What did they do to him?’ Lol asked eventually, wanting to get this over with.

‘Each of the workshops has a storage shed at the rear,’ Bliss said. ‘Wood shed, traditional design with exposed cross-beam.’

Bliss stared into his glass of Gomer Parry’s cloudy homemade cider, the colour of rust and border clay. Threw down names that Lol had never heard before: Jason Mebus, Connor Boyd, Shane Nicklin.

‘The first time they hanged him,’ Bliss said, ‘they cut him down fairly quickly.’

39 Raw Madness

THE BACKSTAIRS WERE a dim half-spiral, coldly lit by one vertical slit too high to see through. Merrily was half-expecting the kitchen below to have a greasy spit and dead meat hanging from hooks, but it wasn’t like that.

‘Good morning again,’ the woman said.

The kitchen was warm and glazed with light tinted orange and emerald from illuminated glass in Gothic tracery around the tops of two long, thin windows. Pale ash units with olive-tiled work surfaces were built around a double-oven Aga. A rack of oak shelves displayed an apothecary’s collection of coloured jars and stoppered bottles.

‘Bell asked me to take care of you.’ The woman, who hadn’t yet introduced herself, had tufted brown hair, wore a white-and-grey-checked suit, no jewellery. ‘If not quite, I have to say, in those words.’

Coffee was percolating, and she was making wholemeal toast.

‘Have a seat, Mrs Watkins.’

Oh.

Merrily said nothing. A stone trough of red and orange tulips sent up a warm glow from below the twin windows, which opened up views across the fields to where the town rose in steep tiers to the church tower.

‘It’s rather late for breakfast,’ the woman said, ‘but I don’t suppose you particularly feel like lunch.’

‘Tea or coffee would be’ – Merrily had noticed that the tulips were in fact growing out of a stone coffin, its interior shaped for a body – ‘fine.’

Life directly out of death. Symbolism everywhere.

The woman wrinkled her nose, tapped the coffin with a shoe. ‘I’m still trying to persuade her to put that morbid artefact outside. Having already bribed the plumber to say there was no way it was going to work as a kitchen sink.’

No way she’d have it outside, either. Bell must have been cosying up to death since her teens.

‘She must be a… challenging person to accommodate,’ Merrily said.

‘Actually we accommodate each other fairly well. I call in most days, on the way to or from the office, or for lunch. Organize all the maintenance people and the services and the cleaner and the gardener and everyone else she’s far too vague to deal with. Do grab yourself a seat.’

There was a round table, with wooden chairs reflecting the design of seventeenth-century Glastonbury church chairs, with stubby X-legs. Merrily slid one out and sat down cautiously.

‘I think we spoke on the phone.’

‘Briefly.’ Susannah Pepper put the tray of coffee and toast in the centre of the table and sat down opposite her and smiled.

Ominous. A friendly, relaxed lawyer was rarely a good omen.

‘Where’s Bell?’

‘I don’t know.’ Susannah looked Merrily in the eyes. She was about thirty, and she seemed fit and confident and capable. Her skin was softly furry, like a peach’s. ‘I persuaded her to go out and let me handle things. She’s awfully disappointed in you. Feels betrayed.’

Silence. The sun had come out, setting fire to the orange glass in the tracery at the top of the windows, and the tulips in the stone coffin reached up like small goblets waiting to be filled.

‘All right,’ Merrily said at last. ‘I’m going to have to ask, aren’t I? How did you know who I was?’

Susannah stood up and went out of the room and came back with a leather briefcase, extracting a folded newspaper and tossing it on the table.

‘This morning’s edition.’

Merrily opened the paper and stared down, growing cold with dismay, at two pictures, one of the Hanging Tower, the other of herself, in colour, full face, under the headline:

EXORCIZE OUR CASTLE OF DEATH

Evil ghost must go, say townsfolk

She looked up. ‘This is crap.’

‘I think you should read it.’

She read it. It was overdramatized and dumbed-down. It was crass. It was full of conjecture. But at the centre of it…

The Mayor of Ludlow, George Lackland, confirmed last night that he had discussed the issue with Hereford exorcist, the Rev. Merrily Watkins.

‘It’s very much a matter for the Church,’ he said. ‘Whether you believe in ghosts or not, there’s no doubt in my mind that a religious service, or an exorcism, would make many people feel more at peace.

‘It’s been suggested that these tragic deaths have brought tourists into the town, but to my mind notoriety of this kind is no good for anyone in the long run.’

‘OK. It’s not crap. Not entirely.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It’s misleading, but it’s come from an actual petition sent to George Lackland. Someone obviously sent a copy to the press. But nobody’s spoken to me about it. I mean, one reason I’m here is to try and avoid anything drastic or…’

‘Laughable,’ Susannah said. ‘Holy water and incantations. Or am I misrepresenting your occupation?’

‘Don’t know where this picture came from, either,’ Merrily said. ‘Looks like an old one… couple of years old, anyway.’

She was outside Ledwardine church, and she was in the full kit. It looked like an official picture from the diocese. She didn’t remember it being taken.

And now Bell Pepper had evidently seen it. Bell, who disliked the clergy, had learned that she was not only a minister but a working exorcist, and she wasn’t called Mary. Everything was now entirely clear, and the situation couldn’t be worse.

‘Would you mind if I had a cigarette?’

‘Yes, I would,’ Susannah said. ‘Cigarettes are disgusting. And let’s drop the bullshit, shall we? Why are you associating my client with what you’ve come here to do? Bearing in mind, before you answer, that I’ve talked to George Lackland.’

‘In which case you’ll be aware that it was George Lackland who approached us – the diocese.’

‘George is an old-fashioned man,’ Susannah said. ‘He still thinks the Church should have a role in the way this town is run, and he seems to have fallen for the myth that the deaths of two children and one old woman are manifestations of some kind of spiritual malaise.’

‘And is he entirely wrong there?’

‘He’s in danger of becoming a laughing stock.’

‘Well…’ Now that George had dropped her in it, there seemed little point in dressing this up. ‘A lot of people saw Bell with Robbie Walsh in the days before he died. A woman famously obsessed with death. Last night, she told me she’d been taking steps to adopt him, which would explain quite a lot. Can you confirm that?’

‘I don’t have to confirm anything to you,’ Susannah said. ‘Your ridiculous role with a failing religion gives you no right, legal or moral, to probe into people’s private lives.’

‘Up to you, Susannah, but adoption at least offers a plausible explanation for—’

‘All right, yes.’ Susannah leaned back and opened her jacket. ‘It was already in progress. It was to have been a substantial settlement, and the mother was practically biting our hands off. Kept ringing me up, just to make sure we weren’t going off the idea.’

‘Figures.’ Merrily thought of all the things Mumford had said about his sister: the extreme bitterness towards their own mother after the boy died. Big money, maybe life-changing money, had just gone down the pan.

‘He’d have moved in here,’ Susannah said, ‘and gone to school in Ludlow. And his gran – of whom he was fond but who was becoming unfit to look after him – would have seen far more of him than she already did. I don’t claim to have fully fathomed out the relationship between Bell and the boy. But they certainly had shared interests which he seems to have been unable to pursue at home.’

‘And perhaps she needed an heir? Of sorts. Would that be…?’

‘You mean for the New Palmers’ Guild Trust?’

‘What exactly is that?’

‘No big secret. The Trust, into which most of Bell’s assets will pass when she dies, will support, in perpetuity, specific historic features of the town.’

Merrily nodded. ‘Like the maintenance of the St Leonard’s cemetery as a wilderness with corpses?’

‘Be assured that I and my successors will administer the Trust entirely according to my client’s wishes.’

‘And the conservation of certain yew trees? Preservation of public rights of way connecting sacred places? And perhaps keeping particular viewpoints open, in the face of possible future development?’

‘The specific details have yet to be sorted out. And you still haven’t explained what you’re doing here.’

‘I’m getting to it,’ Merrily said. ‘But I’m trying to find out how much you know and how much you understand about Bell’s other plans for when she dies.’

‘Don’t know what you mean.’

‘Don’t you? I mean, you really don’t?’

‘Perhaps you should spell it out.’

‘I’m wary,’ Merrily said. ‘I think I’d rather be speaking to her stepdaughter than her lawyer. I mean, what does your father say about all this?’

‘Dad? Dad says be kind to her, never exploit her – and keep me the hell out of it.’ Susannah’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you know about my dad?’

‘Music producer… bewitched by Bell’s obvious charms… maybe liked unusual music, but couldn’t handle the extreme lifestyle which, in her case, went with it.’

‘He lives in Sacramento now, has three children, plays golf.’

‘Your mother was his first wife?’

‘Whom he left for Bell, but that’s all well in the past. My mother’s second husband, if you want the full nepotism bit, is David Sebald, brother of Peter Sebald, one of the original partners in the firm I’m working for.’

‘But you and Bell—’

‘Never got on all that well with David’s other kids, so I used to spend quite a few weekends with Dad and Bell. Who was so completely out of it most of the time that I sometimes felt, at the age of about fifteen, like her stepmother. Like I said, we’ve always accommodated each other. I’m not judgemental.’

‘Mmm.’ Bringing Smith, Sebald one of their wealthiest private clients would have done Susannah no harm at all with the firm.

‘That’s to say, where no criminal law or local statutes are infringed, I don’t question her behaviour,’ Susannah said. ‘This town’s full of eccentrics.’

‘You must be worried about her, though.’

‘Put it this way, my private life would have been a whole lot easier if the firm had been based in Birmingham.’

‘Because then Bell would have come to visit and gone home the next day. But this being where it is, she doesn’t want to leave. Not ever, in fact. Do you know what I’m saying?’

Through the long window, the town glittered on its hill, the sun gilding the pinnacles on the church tower and coating what you could see of the castle walls with crusted honey. No motor vehicles visible. A living dream of Olde Englande.

‘That’s pretty ridiculous.’ Susannah finally looked unnerved. ‘You must realize that.’

‘If I started dismissing ideas that seemed ridiculous, I wouldn’t get very far in this job.’

‘Then it’s a ridiculous job.’

‘It’s apparently been estimated,’ Merrily said, ‘that one in three people has had a paranormal experience, and one in ten has seen a ghost. It all makes perfect sense to Bell.’

‘You’re saying she’s become completely insane?’

‘No, I don’t think she— OK, it’s not good, it’s not healthy, it’s spiritually… a bit squalid, frankly. But it’s not insane. In fact, it’s all been worked out very practically.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Susannah backed away, folding her arms. ‘But if there was any truth in what you’ve just outlined, she’d… in my view, she’d be guaranteed certifiable.’

‘Then how do you explain it? How do you explain her nocturnal perambulations?’

‘She’s a night person. In every sense – her albums are dark and doomy, she likes to mix with goths and weirdos and she’s a bloody exhibitionist.’

‘An exhibitionist who wants to protect her private life and won’t talk to the media, except the local media?’

‘That’s not so unusual. It’s part of the star-mentality. They like to have it both ways.’

‘Look,’ Merrily said. ‘She’s led what she calls a temporary kind of life. She says she was diagnosed at an early age with a congenital heart defect and she’s lived her whole life with the angel of death standing outside the door, sharpening his scythe. I don’t know if that’s true or not—’

‘I’d like to get her to a heart specialist, but she won’t. She has a fear of dying in hospital.’

‘Or anywhere but here. She’s moved from place to place – she’s had the money to do that – and she can’t settle anywhere. Until she arrives in the place of her dreams. Literally. All right, whether she had been dreaming about Ludlow for years is anybody’s guess, but she’s convinced herself she had. And she comes here and she connects. It’s a town where you can walk from century to century, and it’s not been over-cosmeticized. It’s as it was. And for Bell the atmosphere everywhere is dense with… eternity.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s pretty and it’s a good place to work. I can understand her falling in love with it.’

‘For Bell, those streets up there sing. Especially at dead of night, when she’s on her own. They sing, she sings…’

‘Oh, please—’

‘OK, you don’t get it, you don’t feel the density. That’s fine.’

‘Well, hey, I’m sorry.’ Susannah threw up her arms. ‘I’m sorry I’m not a bloody airy-fairy artist, merely a humble solicitor. We just grease the wheels that keep the world turning, and I’m really sorry but we don’t have time to drift off into the ether. Unlike poets. And priests, apparently.’

‘I’m not saying I can feel it on that level, or anywhere near.’

‘She walks around at night in unorthodox clothing and she sings sometimes. Wow.’

‘She’s feeding herself into the fabric of the town. I realize this is bollocks to you, but to her it’s everything and she doesn’t know how much time she has left, and when that time’s up she wants to…’

‘… To be a ghost?’

‘To be a ghost here. Catherine of Aragon, Prince Arthur, Marion de la Bruyère… Belladonna.’

Susannah snorted and turned away. Saul Pepper’s regular daughter, with a solid job and no weird, music-business links.

‘Did you bring this paper in here this morning?’ Merrily said. ‘I mean, you actually showed this to her?’

‘It’s all over town. Someone would have told her, sooner or later.’

‘And what exactly did she say?’

Susannah turned round. ‘She became… distressed. She told me you were in the house, upstairs. That she’d invited you into her house, and you were betraying her. I told her to let me handle it. I didn’t want her wailing and screaming at you, like one of her albums. I told her I’d get rid of you, make sure you never bothered her again.’

‘And how would you have done that? Some kind of injunction?’

‘I’d’ve had you restrained. Gone to a higher authority.’

Merrily put her head on one side. ‘God?’

‘Don’t be stupid. After I spoke to you the other morning, I wasn’t satisfied that you’d taken any notice.’

‘Damn right.’

‘So I spoke to some other people in the Church, and I was referred to your superior, the… Director of Deliverance?’

‘What?’

‘Canon Clarke? I’ve got it written down at the office.’

It felt as though the room shook.

‘She told me that you’d now virtually resigned from your official position,’ Susannah said, ‘because of personal problems. She said you were overstressed. She said if I had any more trouble I should contact her immediately.’

‘I see.’

‘She said we could deal with it between us. I hadn’t realized she was a barrister.’

‘That must’ve been a comfort to you.’

‘If you want the truth,’ Susannah said, ‘I had the feeling of some personal friction, and that’s why I decided to talk to you myself. And now I’m wishing I hadn’t.’

‘OK…’ Merrily took a breath. ‘I want to get something right. Did Bell actually use the word “betrayal”? About me.’

‘She said you’d won her trust and entered her fortress by deceit and you’d betrayed her in the worst way possible. She… she lost it for a while. I was glad to get her out of the house.’

‘How long ago?’

‘Hour or so? Hour and a half?’

‘Any idea at all where she’s gone?’

Susannah shook her head. ‘She just put on her long coat and walked away, and then, a minute or two later, she just, you know, screamed. Just once. She’s always been a screamer, hasn’t she?’

‘You mean you took no notice.’

‘I went to the window. There was no sign of her.’

‘Well, I think I have to find her, don’t I?’ Merrily said.

‘Don’t you ever give up?’

‘No, look, tell me if I’m wrong here. Robbie’s death – the way it happened, and where it happened – took something out of Bell’s life that I don’t think she’ll ever get back. Now she thinks we’re about to try and take something else away. Doesn’t she?’

‘I just can’t believe any of that.’ Susannah moved away across the flags, a trickle of sweat gleaming on her forehead. ‘It’s not rational… even for her.’

‘It’s very rational – for her. And now she thinks the town’s turned against her. Did she tell you she was attacked last night? Did you see her face?’

‘She said she tripped.’ Susannah stood with her back to the window, her mouth half open, her control slipping away fast. ‘Tripped, coming down The Linney.’

‘But now, worst of all, the town’s conspiring with the Church to have Marion exorcized. Marion. And all she represents.’

You’ll lie like carrion… I’ll fly like Marion.

‘Look, that petition’s virtually a fake!’ Susannah shouted.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Most people here couldn’t care less about all this nonsense. Yes, there were petition forms in a few shops, but hardly anybody signed. It’s George, can’t you see that? My bloody soon-to-be father-in-law, God help me. George is behind it.’

‘Why would—?’

‘Ask him. You go and ask the old bastard.’

On the way back to the road – mid-afternoon, now – Merrily stopped to look back at The Weir House, a shambling timbered and stone farmhouse, born again. Trees on two sides were thickening into spring, and the grass was getting longer, and either she could hear the river or the hissing was in her head.

She walked across to the yew tree, where the paths converged, the hollow yew growing anew around its own exposed entrails, wondering if she’d dreamed last night that there was a door in it, like in a fairy tale – Bell stowing something in there, the mandolin in its case. Was this the same mandolin that had appeared on the cover of Nightshades? If so, what was its significance? She couldn’t play it, she probably couldn’t play any instrument. And anyway…

… There was no door, only a black and gaping hole, as if the tree had been shot with a cannon ball. Merrily paused, glanced over her shoulder and then stepped over the roots and into the tree, the ripe and resinous yew scent all around her.

The door was here. It was in the tree, loose, separated.

She edged it out. It was the real thing, beautifully shaped to fit the elliptical hole in the tree into which a solid frame had been moulded. The door looked like oak and had strong cast-iron hinges, one hanging off.

The key, presumably, was kept hidden somewhere in the tangle of tree. But there was no need for it, because the door had been brutally removed; you could see the marks left by the crowbar or whatever had been used to wrench it off.

Merrily went back into the hole, and kicked something with her trainer. Picked it up and brought it out: a prayer book. No need to look inside to know this was going to be the one that George Lackland said had been taken from St Laurence’s.

Someone had forced an entry, and Bell must have discovered it when she left.

She just, you know, screamed. Just once.

Merrily went back in, further this time, pushing up her sleeves. Seemed there was room to fit a couple of people in here at least. Her fingers found something regular and rigid and jutting out at about chest height: a ledge, a shelf. She felt around on top of it and drew back with a shudder – something slick and slippery like fat on bone.

Right. She brought out the Zippo.

The fatty item was a candle. Two of them on the wooden ledge; she lit one and watched the ancient organism becoming a brackish grotto around her, parts of its walls hanging like fragments of a rotting rood-screen, other segments moist and alive like hard flesh.

The candle flame was reflected in several small jars with stoppers, like the ones on the apothecary shelves in the kitchen, only clear. One had what looked like water in it, with some sediment at the bottom. Others contained sandy soil, crumbled dead leaves and what looked like chips of stone. Two bigger jars held coils of hair, yellow and white, and there was a small one with what seemed to be thin wood-shavings, but were probably nail clippings.

No mandolin case.

Just, you know, screamed…

‘What are you doing?’

Merrily came out of the tree. Susannah Pepper stood in the grass, her business suit vainly buttoned against the raw madness in the air.

‘You knew about this, Susannah?’

‘I thought you were going to look for her.’

‘Somebody broke into the tree. That would be why she screamed.’

‘It cost her a fortune. She had this guy who does wood sculptures up from Herefordshire. She told him she was going to make it into a summer house.’

‘Not exactly. Do you know what she kept in there?’

‘Private things. That was the point. We weren’t supposed to know.’

‘Good an excuse as any,’ Merrily said. ‘I was once married to a lawyer. The thing he used to say that I was most uneasy about was, “You can sleep better if you know when to stop asking questions.” There’s one thing missing from here.’

‘I don’t—’

‘The mandolin case she put in here last night?’

‘I don’t know anything about that. I think I’ve seen it, obviously…’

‘She play the mandolin often, Susannah? She play anything?’

‘She plays games,’ Susannah said.

Mumford

WAITED ON THE spare land round by the old Greyhound Dog pub, and he was wearing the new clothes he’d bought at Millet’s – sort of clothes he’d never worn in his life before, jogger’s clothes. Felt real strange, too loose. Like he was naked.

Also had on Robbie’s baseball cap, the one that was always far too big on the boy, made him look dafter than he’d known. Mabbe there was another reason Mumford was wearing that cap, but he didn’t want to think about that.

Thing was, nobody was looking at him. Half his life, folks had seen him coming – looked like a copper the way a sheep looked like a sheep – and now, feeling more conspicuous than at any time since his first day in uniform thirty years ago, he was aware of folks passing by and nobody noticing him. And he realized the so-called plain clothes he’d been wearing for work all those years weren’t plain clothes at all these days, they were obvious copper’s clothes.

Stayed at the Green Dragon last night, biggest hotel in Hereford, therefore the most anonymous. Money no object. Emerging this morning in his jogging kit: dumpy, middle-aged, bastard, casual civilian.

And even Jason Mebus never noticed him.

After he’d come out the pub, round about half-one, Jason had been straight down the chip shop, the Fries Tuck, and he was walking up now, over Greyfriars Bridge, loping along, eating his chips and still making faster progress than the two lines of cars queuing up to get into town. Saturday-afternoon shoppers. It was all queues in Hereford now – more useless chain stores and still no bypass on the schedules. Be gridlocked soon, this city.

Mabbe Jason was meeting somebody in town – a girl or one of his scumbag mates. Mumford let him get close enough to the end of the bridge and then he started jogging.

Smiling at himself. This was what retired bastards did, to stay alive. All looking like Mumford in his tracksuit top and his pale blue trousers with elasticized bottoms, and his trainers.

Nobody else even walking this side of the bridge. He could see the traffic lights up ahead now, the vehicles nose-to-tail. Over the wall on his left was the River Wye where there used to be a restaurant. All this kind of recreation happening across the road now at Left Bank Village, so it was lucky Jason wasn’t heading towards town on that side. No chance there; far too crowded.

Thirty yards behind Jason now, and the sound of his trainers was muffled by the growling traffic. Had his baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, looking down at the footpath, and just as well; with fifteen or twenty yards to go, Jason heard him and glanced over his shoulder and then back into his chips – just some sad ole jogger.

What Mumford did next was start smiling. Beaming all over his face. It didn’t come easy, never had, but he did it. Dumpy, middle-aged, genial, smiling bastard civilian.

Drawing level with Jason now, puffing a bit and slowing up as the traffic lights turned fortuitously to green, all the drivers’ attention fixed on getting through.

And Jason, stuffing a chip in his gob, never seen it coming.

Soon as the boy’s hand was back in the chip bag, Mumford’s shoulder connected with the muscle near the top of his arm, the bag flying up in the air.

‘Oh, sorry, mate! Sorry!’

‘You fuckin’ clumsy—’

‘Let me help you, boy,’ Mumford said and, with his back to the traffic, smacked Jason in the mouth, not too hard but hard enough.

The boy was still choking on the chip while Mumford was propelling him down the street to the left and across the car park, back towards the underside of the bridge. Figuring that under the bridge was best. Be nobody about on this side. Nice bit of dereliction, fair bit of cover.

Plenty of time, plenty of river. And he had the bastard who, one way or another, had murdered Robbie Walsh.

40 Heavier Than You Know

‘LEDWARDINE VICARAGE,’ LOL said.

‘Is the vicar there?’ Woman’s voice, local accent.

Lol said the vicar was out and asked if he could take a message.

He was unhappy. He’d answered two calls so far from parishioners, both of whom seemed to have recognized his voice, neither of whom had wanted to discuss the nature of their business with him. The tones suggesting that they thought the vicar was not out at all but was perhaps upstairs, sobbing into her pillow, aching from dozens of bruises in places where they wouldn’t show.

‘When will she be back? I mean, can you contact her? Has she got a mobile?’

‘No, she hasn’t. Not at the moment. I can’t contact her, I’m afraid.’

Lol heard a door opening behind him. Jane came into the scullery, looking flushed, followed by Eirion.

‘Damn,’ the woman said. ‘Look, if she comes in, can you get her to ring me. Like, just me, OK? Anybody else answers, don’t talk to them. Can you tell her that? My name’s Karen Dowell. Tell her I’m Andy Mumford’s… something or other, relation. She’ll know.’

‘Oh. You’re calling from police headquarters.’

Pause. ‘Who are you, exactly?’ Karen Dowell said.

‘My name’s Lol Robinson. I’m a… friend.’

Jane was making handle-turning motions at him, to wind this up. He tucked the phone between his shoulder and his cheek and raised both hands at her.

‘OK,’ Karen Dowell said, ‘I know who you are. Mr Robinson, have you heard from Andy?’

‘No, but I’ve had Bliss here.’

‘I know that. He said he was going to talk to the vicar. They all seem to trust the vicar.’

‘He talked to me instead.’

‘Where exactly is Mrs Watkins?’

‘She’s in Ludlow.’

‘Damn,’ Karen said. ‘Listen, can I really trust—’

‘Yes, you can.’

‘Not a word to Bliss, not to anybody, apart from the vicar and Andy, if he calls.’

‘I understand,’ Lol said.

‘Don’t even make notes, you only need the sense of this.’

‘OK.’

‘I’ve been doing PNC checks for Andy – police computer, yeah?’

‘Right.’

‘And following stuff up. I’m good with computers, it’s my thing. Checked out a number of people connected with the Plascarreg, which you don’t need to know about. The one you do need to know about is Jonathan Swift.’

‘The writer?’

‘It’s a guy in Ludlow who Andy asked me to check a few days ago. He calls himself something else there, but this is the name in which his car’s registered. He hasn’t got a record, but I’m always suspicious when there’s a name change involved, so I made a few calls. We had a previous address for him in Cheshire, near Stockport, so I belled a bloke I was at the police college with, works at Greater Manchester Police. Keeping it off the record. And he put me onto another guy, OK? I’m stressing again that this is unofficial, Mr Robinson, and only for (a) Andy, (b) the vicar, right? My neck’s gonner be on the block here.’

‘Is this a man called Jonathan Scole?’

‘That’s correct. His real name’s Swift, and the crux of it is his parents were shot dead. Both of them. They… you there, Mr Robinson?’

‘Yes.’

‘You on your own?’

Lol caught Jane’s eye, pointed at the door. ‘Yes.’

‘All right: Swift’s parents ran a transport caff – greasy spoon, yeah? They were shot as they were leaving at closing time, just before midnight. Takings stolen. I remember this one, actually, although no reason you would. Major police hunt, but nobody ever caught. Very efficient. Head shots with a handgun. Well, no shortage of them in the Manchester area these days.’

‘Recently?’ Lol nodded as Jane shrugged and slipped out, with Eirion.

‘Last year. I’ve got the date somewhere, but that don’t matter. Bit of a puzzler, though, because the takings came to just over three hundred. Peanuts, in other words. Two people shot dead at close range, for three hundred? Even in Manchester, you don’t get that. It was on Crimewatch and they got zilch from the public. It was all very carefully planned, and kids after money for drugs aren’t that careful, take my word.’

‘And so… what’s the significance?’

‘Contract killing,’ Karen said. ‘That’s the whisper. That’s the unspoken. Not a shred of evidence, mind.’

‘The parents were, like, underworld figures?’

‘Good God, no, they were respectable people who worked day and night and didn’t even have any points on their driving licences. Contract killing en’t what it used to be, Mr Robinson. Too many guns about now, and too many evil little buggers who’ll do it for a thousand or less.’

‘So this guy in Ludlow changed his name… because his parents were murdered?’

‘He changed his name, originally, on police advice, because people started pointing the finger. Collected a lot of money, see – sale of a house, sale of a café to a national chain looking for a site. Now, he was personally in the clear – away on a business-studies course. Full alibi. But, as I say, neighbours and friends of Mr and Mrs Swift were whispering about terrible domestic rows. Had a temper on him, see. Not a happy family.’

‘Look,’ Lol said, feeling his chest going tight, ‘can you spell this out? What are we worrying about, in particular? I don’t know this guy, but I think Merrily does.’

‘Well, Mr Robinson, I don’t know, do I? I’m just passing on what I’ve discovered. It might be something or nothing. But I’d feel real bad if I hadn’t passed it on and then something happened. Which is why I’m telling you now rather than wait till Andy shows up. And that’s another problem, ennit?’

‘If I’m allowed to write your number down,’ Lol said, ‘I’ll call you back if I hear from Andy.’

‘That would be very good of you, long as you remember—’

‘Don’t talk to anyone else, if you’re not there.’

‘That’s exactly right,’ Karen said.

Jane didn’t even ask who he’d been talking to. She pressed him into a chair in the kitchen, knelt down facing him, gripping the chair arms.

‘Lol, listen… just listen, and then answer the questions. When Jack Fine from Q magazine came, what exactly—?’

‘Jane, we need to swap over.’ Lol pushed himself up, patting his jeans to make sure he had his car keys. ‘You need to stay here, and I have to go over to Ludlow.’

‘Huh? Mum is OK, isn’t she?’

‘I’m sure she’s fine. Just some things I need to tell her.’

‘What things?’

Jane’s eyes were concentrated and glittering with so much awareness it was scary. Age of transition: old enough to drive, almost old enough to vote for a new government and get drunk in pubs with the state’s blessing. Old enough to have no more adult so-called secrets being whispered behind your back.

But telling her about her mother and a man who the police didn’t like because his parents had been shot dead… and about the kids on the Plascarreg who’d shown Robbie Walsh what it was like to be hanged… how could any of this really help?

‘You’re feeling sidelined, aren’t you? Out of it,’ Jane said. ‘She never thinks about that.’

‘She doesn’t have time.’

‘You make too many excuses for her. Sometimes she needs to put her own relationship first. Yeah, OK, do it. You go, we’ll stay. But first, we need to ask you some things.’

‘It’s called The Weir House, right, and it’s down below the castle, near the river?’

‘She might not even be there now. Lol—’

‘It’s a small town, I’ll find her.’

‘Lol, you can spare, like, ten… OK, five… five minutes? You do want to know who set you up, don’t you? The anonymous notes?’

‘It was a little kid. I’ve just—’

‘It was a big kid, actually.’

‘Lol,’ Eirion said, ‘she’s right, for once. This is heavier than you know. For starters, Jack Fine’s not from Q magazine, he’s this bastard I go to school with, and he was here purely to get information out of you. I don’t want to hold you up or anything, but basically Jane recognized him and this morning we went to his dad’s house to face him up.’

‘His dad publishes magazines,’ Jane said. ‘He used to be a national-paper journalist, and now he publishes all kinds of trade and, like, professional magazines and junk like that. He also tips off the papers on stories, and the son, J.D. Fyneham – Jack Fine – his personal weekend job is on much the same lines. He’s got all this desktop publishing kit, and he does this church-magazine scam, and he’s open for commissions and it seems to me he’s not fussy where they come from.’

‘We got so far with him,’ Eirion said, ‘and then it became clear there were people he was more intimidated by than, like, Jane.’

‘What, you mean he edits the Yardies’ international newsletter?’ Lol stood up. ‘Look, guys, I’m sure this is significant stuff I’ll really want to know about… tonight?’

‘Just tell us what questions Fyneham asked you,’ Eirion said. ‘And then you can go, and we’ll stop here by the phone.’

‘Well, he… he did try to find out about Merrily and me. I suspect he’d heard something, but I headed him off. I said I wasn’t in any particular relationship at present.’

‘Oh, we know he’d heard something,’ Eirion said. ‘In fact, any day now you could open the Sun and find, like, “Villagers have been shocked by the violent love-affair between their woman vicar and a rock singer with a conviction for a sex offence.” Well, more guarded than that, obviously…’

‘He’s not kidding, Lol,’ Jane said, watching his eyes.

‘Jane, I didn’t tell him anything.’

‘Well, somebody did. Either he’s been sniffing around the village in his spare time, or somebody’s been feeding him sick gossip.’

‘All right.’ Lol told them about Gomer Parry and the small boy and the ten quid. ‘You’re actually saying this guy was behind that?’

‘We don’t know, to be honest,’ Jane said. ‘We think he’s got to be. But who’s behind him? What else did he ask you about?’

‘He went into the court case and what led up to it and the loony-bin years, all that. He knew about it already, and I just made sure he got it right. Told him it really wasn’t much of a story any more.’

‘Hmm,’ Jane said.

‘And the rest was mainly about the music. Was I putting all my bad experiences into songs, like “Heavy Medication Day”? Which was fair enough. He said it sounded like this Dr Gascoigne had done some unpleasant things to me. He was trying to find out what they were. I didn’t tell him.’

‘Anything else?’

‘I don’t think so. If I think of anything else, I’ll call you on the mobile.’

‘Well, leave it switched on,’ Jane said.

‘OK.’ Lol paused in the doorway. ‘So Jack Fine really wasn’t doing an actual interview for Q? Or anything?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘OK,’ Lol said.

He walked across to the square to collect his Astra, a nobody again. Thinking that it was always harder for a nobody to defend himself, his loved ones, his reputation.

When Lol had gone, Jane switched on the computer, thinking how wise it had been of her to persuade Mum to have an extra phone line installed.

‘Where do we start?’

Eirion raised his eyes to the ceiling. Meaning Jane’s attic apartment where, last summer, she’d lost her virginity to him – not realizing that, despite all his man-of-the-world crap, he was simultaneously losing his to her. Never quite forgiven him for that.

‘Out of the question,’ Jane said.

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘The way you were sitting said it all.’ Jane clicked into Internet Explorer. ‘What are we looking for? Like, has Lol really told us anything we didn’t already know?’

It had become interesting when Fyneham had admitted that the new Evesham computer Jane had been threatening with extinction had been bought for him in return for helping one of his dad’s… hard to say if it was a friend or just a client. But the guy had wanted to know about Merrily and Lol, particularly Lol, which was bizarre.

What he’d wanted to know, basically, as Jane had understood it, was like, well… dirt. Anything damaging. Lol and Mum? Someone wanted to damage Lol and Mum?

Just then, unfortunately, Fyneham’s dad’s Alfa had pulled up outside. Back-up. So Fyneham had become braver. Presumably the old man was as bent as his son. So JD had gone back on his story, claiming he’d been, like, just saying that about this guy, to wind them up.

Eirion pulled out a Parish Pump leaflet he’d picked up from a pile in the office suite. Jane at once snatched it and screwed it up.

‘Parish Pimp, more like.’

‘No!’ Eirion grabbed it back, smoothed it out. ‘I made some notes on this. Listed all the titles his dad publishes.’

‘Does that help us?’

‘Might do. What Hereford Council Can Do for You? Do we know any bent councillors your mum might have offended?’

‘Most councillors wind up bent after a few years. What else is on the list? I forget.’

‘Microlite Monthly? DigiCam!’

‘Anorak rags.’

‘I was saving the best one. The Clinical Therapist.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Google it,’ Eirion said.

The Clinical Therapist. Biannual digest of new developments in clinical psychiatry aimed primarily at hospital-based psychiatrists and allied practitioners. Est. 1999. Lord Shipston. DClinPsych, MSc.

‘Not many cartoons, then,’ Eirion said.

‘Lol once told me, in one of his more embittered moments, that the majority of shrinks rise to the top by having nothing at all to do with people but just writing papers for dismal publications like this. I mean, Lord Shipston? How many neurotics has he ever had on the couch? Let’s go back and snatch Fyneham when he leaves the house.’

‘We’re supposed to be minding the phone. We’ll just have to sit here and amuse ourselves.’

‘Actually, Irene,’ Jane said, ‘I think I’m probably having a frigid day. Too much exposure to male greed, male dishonesty, immorality, hypocrisy – that kind of stuff.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t you put your bloody Huw Edwards chapel face on, you’re no better. You told me you weren’t a virgin. You totally spoiled my first experience. All the time I’m thinking, Oh no, I’m going to be such a disappointment compared with all the others.’

‘What do you think I was feeling?’

‘I remember exactly what you were feeling, I just didn’t realize you’d never felt one before.’

The phone rang. Jane snatched it.

‘She’s still not back?’

‘No, I’m sorry, Sophie.’

‘I see.’ Sophie still thought Jane should call her Mrs Hill. Too bad.

‘What did you want, exactly?’

‘I wanted to talk to her, Jane.’

‘Sophie,’ Jane said. ‘How old will I have to be before you recognize me as someone of mature intelligence and perception?’

‘In your case, Jane, although it’s possible I may live long enough to change my mind—’

‘Yeah, yeah… Look, can I sound you out about something, while you’re on? Eirion and me, we’ve been talking to this guy who was set up to interview Lol, maybe to find stuff out about him and Mum.’

‘Who’s this?’

‘Guy called J.D. Fyneham. His dad’s a magazine publisher. Fyneham does this… have you come across this Parish Pump thing, offers to revamp parish magazines?’

‘I have, actually,’ Sophie said. ‘Bryce Orford left some leaflets for me to hand out to—’

‘Who’s Bryce Orford?’

‘The Dean. What’s this about, again?’

‘Somebody’s trying to damage Lol and Mum, that’s the bottom line. I mean, you must know that’s happening.’

‘Yes, I believe it is. I just hope this isn’t one of your—’

‘This is absolutely on the level, Sophie, I swear on… on the grave of Lucy Devenish. And I think you know something, don’t you?’

Jane held her breath, watching Eirion’s stony chapel face awaken into human interest.

‘All right, tell me everything,’ Sophie said.

Jane had relented and, about twenty minutes later, she and Eirion were into some mild petting on the rug by the desk when Sophie called back.

‘That was, um, quick.’

‘Jane, I’m in the office now, and it’s very important that I talk to your mother.’

‘Well, Lol’s gone over to Ludlow now, and he’s got a phone, so we expect to be in contact soon.’

‘The best we can hope for, I suppose. Jane, you should know that I’m now treating you as a person of mature intelligence.’

‘Right…’ Jane had a hand under her top, repositioning her bra. She blushed. ‘Thank you.’

‘I’ve had to come into the office after a call from the Bishop. Something’s happened, and the Bishop was in a quandary and, in the absence of Merrily, I’m afraid, he was forced to refer it to the Deliverance Panel. Telling me at the same time, of course, in the hope that the information would also reach Merrily.’

‘She rang,’ Jane remembered. ‘The Callaghan-Clarke woman.’

‘When?’

‘This morning. She thought the media might be after Mum. I forgot. So much was… Do you know what that was about?’

‘I think I do, but this is something else that’s just developed. Merrily probably knows about it already, which is why she hasn’t been in touch. Jane, I can hardly believe it.’

Sophie’s tone indicating that she just had to talk to somebody or she’d go crazy.

‘What’s…?’ Jane raised her eyebrows at Eirion, who was on his feet, face full of questions.

‘It’s the castle again,’ Sophie said bleakly. ‘Another child.’