The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (51 page)

‘Gone down to the main road to wait for the fire brigade. In the end, he didn’t need to go all the way up the track to see what had happened. It was pretty obvious.’

‘What was?’

‘It was that old camper van, used by all kinds of people for all kinds of purposes – some idiot had contrived to set it alight, and the petrol tank blew up. Ben doesn’t think anybody was in there, but if they were— Come on, we may as well go and join him; there’s nothing we can do here.’

‘
No...
’

‘Jane, it’s very cold and I’m—’

‘You didn’t hear it, then?’

Beth Pollen peered at her. ‘What are we talking about?’

Jane was holding on to Mrs Pollen’s arm with both hands, just couldn’t seem to let go. The torch beam was dragged away over the uneven ground. They were on the floor of what had been a quarry, between the snowbound bypass and the sheerest face of Stanner Rocks, going up maybe a hundred feet then some more in jagged stages, before the summit sloped back into the forestry behind.

There was a distant warbling: fire engines. The real world. Jane sagged, relieved for maybe the first time in her life to be slipping back into a place where the arrival of fire engines could make everything all right.

She let go of Beth Pollen’s arm. It occurred to her that this was the first time she and this woman had been alone together, one-to-one. On every other occasion, others had been there – Ben or the White Company, of whom Mrs Pollen was the most... normal.

‘You... know my mother?’

‘I know
of
your mother,’ Mrs Pollen said.

‘Only Amber said you might want to talk to her.’

‘Did she?’

‘Before you— What’s
that
?’ Jane grabbed at Mrs Pollen’s arm again.

‘It sounds like the fire brigade at last, thank God. What
is
the matter with you?’

‘No...’ Steering the torch towards the rocks. ‘
That
.’

Pointing to an area about ten yards away, an area of white but a different kind of white: the splodgy, pink-spattered white of the butcher’s counter.

‘You really are a tiresome girl,’ Beth Pollen said.

And then she said, ‘Oh my God... Oh my
God
.’

Then, as it would seem, he became as one that hath a devil, for rushing down the stairs into the dining hall, he sprang upon the great table... and he cried aloud before all the company that he would that very night render his body and soul to the Powers of Evil if he might but overtake the wench.

35

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

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

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

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

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

‘Mrs Watkins. How’re you?’

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

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

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

‘Gomer, eh?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You can handle hardship.’

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

Merrily followed Jane into the lounge.

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

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

‘Perceptive of me, Jane.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Why you?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Nobody else about?’

‘Er... no. Not as far as I know.’

‘How long were you separated?’

‘Only a few minutes.’

‘And where was Mr Foley?’

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

‘So just you and Mrs Pollen.’