The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (41 page)

‘It’s certainly ruined any chance of Alice getting to sleep.’

‘
Reach out
, Jeavons said.
Embrace
.’ Merrily sighed.

‘I really wouldn’t like to think of you embracing Darrin Hook,’ Lol said.

27

J
ANE
FOLLOWED
B
EN
down the red-carpeted stairs, aware of dragging her feet. Ben was silent the whole way. He wore a black fleece zipped all the way up and black jeans. He was like his own shadow.

As they came into the lobby Jane saw the build-up of snow on the window ledges and thought,
He can fire me, but he can’t send me home in this
.

The office behind the reception desk was used mainly by Natalie to monitor incomings and outgoings and to deal with wages for occasional cleaners and waitresses. It had originally been some kind of cloak and boot room. There were still a dozen coat hooks on walls that were cracked, white and windowless. The desk was ebony-coloured, with gold-leaf bits and had come from Ben and Amber’s London flat.

Ben sat behind the desk in a leather swivel chair and nodded at the typist’s chair opposite. A strip light made his thin face white and taut. Jane sat, too. Headmaster’s-study situation.

‘Look, Ben, all I meant—’

He waved her into silence. Above his head was a framed print of one of the etchings from the
Strand Magazine
. It was almost entirely black, except for a white spurt of flame from a pistol. Beneath the drawing, it said:
Holmes had emptied five barrels of his revolver into the creature’s flank
.

Ben said, ‘This business of strange forces, curses, hauntings, the mystical powers of the Border, the retentive power of ancient rocks... It’s absolute rubbish, isn’t it?’ He leaned back, his hands clasped on his chest, swivelling a little. ‘Jane, I’m a drama man, always will be, and that’s about using
real
people and
real
places to create an
illusion
.’

Jane nodded.

‘When you’re putting a TV production together,’ Ben said, ‘you have this great tangle of egos – actors, writers, money men. You have time limits, locations, weather conditions. And you have to contain the lot inside a budget that never seems adequate to the task. And then, when it’s all over, you’re competing for just ninety minutes of someone’s attention. Which is fine; it obliges me to’ – Ben unclasped his hands and brought them slowly together in the air – ‘condense.’

‘Make it... controllable?’

Ben smiled.

‘But what are you – I’m sorry – what are you talking about exactly? The documentary or...?’

‘The whole thing. The big picture. Stanner, the enterprise. This place appealed to me as soon as I saw it because it’s pure artifice, built to look like a Gothic manor house, on a lavish scale. A production. And then, thanks to Conan Doyle, it became Baskerville Hall,
another
creation.’

Jane thought about this. ‘But if
The Hound of the Baskervilles
was based on an actual legend – a real legend – then there
is
a kind of reality here, surely.’

‘A real legend?’ Ben looked pained. ‘How real
is
a legend? What’s the so-called Hound of Hergest now but a half-forgotten local folk tale? Who’s even heard about that outside this immediate area? Whereas the Hound of the Baskervilles – the creation, the artifice – is world-famous, immortal... a hugely powerful image.
That
’s the power I’m harnessing – I mean, stuff the Hound of Hergest. Its part was over as soon as Doyle’s book was written.’

Typical
. Jane’s mouth tightened.

‘What?’ Ben said. ‘Come on, spit it out.’

‘Well, it’s... you know it’s been
seen.
’

‘What has?’

‘The Hound. Or something. Something that’s killing sheep. The shooters... that’s what they were after.’

Ben nodded slowly.

Jane blinked at him. ‘You knew that?’

‘About Dacre and his pathetic bounty? Of course I knew. Known about it for a while. And naturally, I love the idea of something out there. And I love the idea of people believing in it, and I want to hear their stories. As long as the bastard
stays
out there... something unknown.’

Ben laughed. Over his head, Sherlock Holmes pumped round after round into the flank of the poor hound, its head and muzzle outlined in white lines of phosphorus.

‘Only Dacre – who I’ve never met, by the way, and have no particular wish to – rather shot himself in the foot. When he heard I was making inquiries about sightings of the Hound, he instructed his tenants, his employees at the farm and the hunt kennels – anybody, in fact, he felt he had authority over – to keep
shtum
.’ Ben smiled, tongue prodding at the inside of a cheek. ‘Fortunately, in this day and age the feudal flame burns rather lower than it used to.’

‘You actually knew the shooters were working for him?’

‘Well, not at first. I’d heard rumours of what they were after, but I only started putting it together after you and I and Antony encountered them in the lane at Hergest Court. Ended up meeting a very interesting old guy in Kington – no friend of Dacre’s and more than willing to talk to me about a number of things, as it happens. Yes, of course I knew who they were working for.’

‘So when you found that guy Nathan...’

‘When I
lost it completely
, you mean, Jane? When I
risked facing a murder charge
?’

Jane squirmed. She looked away from Ben’s taunting eyes, inevitably up at the etching. And then it was like Holmes’s pistol had gone off in her head in a spurt of light. Something began, shockingly, to make sense.

Ben looked up as Natalie’s head came round the door.

‘Ben, Alistair Hardy’s just arrived, with that guy Matthew. I’ve shown them up to the Chancery room. I have to take Clancy to a neighbour’s for the night, OK? The drive’s totally blocked at The Nant – I’ll be back later.’

‘Nat – do be careful. We need you enormously this weekend.’

‘Yeah, I know. I’ll try not to get stuck,’ Natalie said, and Ben raised a hand.

For a moment, as the door closed on Natalie, the instability of the Border seemed to vibrate through the room, making everything glow, but with a cheap and garish light. Jane took a breath and came right out with it.

‘The truth is that the very last thing you wanted was for those guys to come out of the pines with a dead puma. That would’ve blown it, right?’

‘Blown it?’

‘The mystique.’ Jane gripped the sides of her chair. ‘A whole century’s worth. Like, you don’t believe the story of the spectral hound, but you don’t want it disproved either. You didn’t want those guys coming up with anything real that they’d shot. Certainly not anywhere near Stanner. Like...
Oh, we’ve shot the Hound
. And it gets in all the papers. You really didn’t want that.’

‘Would’ve been a touch prosaic,’ Ben agreed.

‘And that was really... that was
why
?’

She heard him shouting at the shooters on the last night of the murder weekend.
I warned you, not on my land! This time you’re fucking dog meat!

You thought you knew about people. She’d had this nice, safe image of Ben: clever, charming, theatrical, faintly camp.

Ben shrugged. Jane almost cringed from him.

The snow was piled like mashed potato out by the entrance of Danny’s place, and Danny had his tractor out, with the snow-plough attachment and the spotlights. If he got it cleared now and he was up again by five tomorrow, likely he could keep on top of it.

He climbed down and stood by the gate, looking out. The Queens of the Stone Age were giving it some welly from the stereo back in the cab, singing, as it happened, about the sky falling. If this went on, there’d be some contract work for him and Gomer, from the county highways, sure to be. Plant hire, like Gomer kept saying, never slept.

Normally he’d be excited: snow was a challenge, folk needed help. But tonight he felt weary. Biggest problem was the lane outside – passable now, with four-wheel drive, but tomorrow was another day. Danny was knackered now, and the snow was oppressive.

Back at the house, he saw a tongue of yellow light – the back door opening – and Greta shouted, ‘Is it clear?’

‘Clear as I can get it without two tons of grit.’ Danny left the music on and trudged back up the path.

‘Only Jeremy rang, see. Wanted to know if we could take the child tonight on account his track’s blocked solid.’

Danny kept on walking till he reached the back door. ‘Gimme that again, Gret.’

‘The child. Clancy? That woman— Her mother... is gonner bring her down from the hotel. Drop her off yere.’

‘Wants
us
to have her?’

‘I said I’d make up the spare bed.’

Danny stood just short of the step, trying to figure it. This Natalie and the kiddie, here they were at a great big hotel full of empty bedrooms... and they wanted the spare bed in the box-room where he kept all his albums. But even that wasn’t the
most
unlikely aspect of it.

‘Nothing strike you as funny, Gret?’ Danny breathed in stinging air through his teeth. ‘
Jeremy’s track?
When is Jeremy’s track
ever
blocked?’

‘You gonner come in or not, ’fore we loses every bit of heat in the house?’ Greta backed away from the cold, arms folded.

Danny stepped inside. ‘If anybody knowed the big snow was on the way... When I was up The Nant earlier on, he’d got a trailerload of grit all ready. Had his ewes down last night, all tucked up. And now you tell me—’

Danny’s brain froze.

‘Well, what you want me to say?’ Greta demanded. ‘I accuse him of lying, say we en’t having the girl—? What’s wrong?’

‘He don’t want the kiddie there. Why don’t he want the kiddie there?’

Her stared at him, not getting it.

‘Greta, how’d he sound? What d’he sound like, in hisself?’

‘Sounded like he always does, to me. Half-baked. What’s the—?’

‘When was this? When’d he ring?’

‘Half an hour ago, mabbe. You was busy out there, I didn’t wanner bother you with—’

‘Holy shit, Greta...’ The jolt to Danny’s senses kicked him back outside. He shut his eyes and he threw his head back, feeling the fat snowflakes coming down on his upturned face and his beard and his gritted teeth. He snapped back upright. ‘Call him.’ Wiping his eyes hard with the heel of his hand. ‘If he don’t answer, call again. And again.’

‘What do I say to him?’

‘Talk about the weather, talk about any damn thing.’ Danny stumbled away through the snow to his tractor. ‘But keep him talking.’

Jane ran upstairs and tossed the camcorder on her bed in fury. Picked up her phone and saw there was a message on the voice-mail: Antony’s number.

Sod
that
. She dropped the phone on the bed and sat quietly for a while with the light out, watching the snow drifting past the window, wishing she’d caught the usual bus, gone home to Mum. Someone you could count on to behave like... decently.

What was worst about this was that Ben didn’t even seem to see anything vaguely wrong in meeting violence with violence. And all to sustain his
hugely powerful image
.

She felt sick. She wanted out of here.

With no enthusiasm, she picked up the phone, keyed in the message.

‘
Jane. Listen, hen, I have a problem. We’re talking white hell here. Those guys at the Highways Agency, they’re never prepared for cruel and unusual weather, and it looks like they’re about to close the Severn Bridge. I’m doing ma best here, but it may be tomorrow night or later before I can get over there. Looks like it’s down to you, the big one. Don’t worry about it, you screw up it’s no’ the end of the world, we can reconstruct. Just weld the wee thing to your hands and get what you can: lots of Ben, lots of the weirdos, keep in tight, don’t zoom. And don’t be put off; they get used to the lens, the punters and the victims both. Good luck.
’

‘Sod off,’ Jane said sourly. If they thought she wanted to be part of the
artifice
, they could both sod off.

It seemed likely now that they were all in this – the White Company too. Was Alistair Hardy really going to tell the viewers that he couldn’t actually get Conan Doyle on the line? Was he going to tell Ben that Conan Doyle had confirmed to him that the Hound was purely a Devon myth? Not if he had any psychic sense of what Ben was about – Ben, who suddenly was no longer endearingly eccentric, but more than a little unstable.

Maybe it was simply mid-life crisis, hormonal: Ben well into his fifties now, racing the clock. Ready to hurl the clock to the ground, it seemed, and hack at it with his heel in rage. Ready to damage anybody threatening the
now drama
.

Reluctantly, Jane called Antony back. At least he was younger and therefore probably less desperate. When he answered, she could hear a car engine.