The Prayer of the Night Shepherd (73 page)

Here now.

Everything is all right.

The tingling in the spine.

But she felt so utterly tired that the candles blurred and the faces fused. She shook herself very lightly.

Not everyone took communion. Beth Pollen was first, looking up at the rising cold blue in the stained-glass window. Then Jane, with a wry and slightly apprehensive smile.

Brigid, when her turn came, had her eyes closed.

‘The bread of heaven in Jesus Christ.’

If she’d done this before, it had not been for a long time. Her hands came up, reaching for the chalice, the cuffs of her black shirt unbuttoned, falling back over her wrists so that Merrily could see deep, fresh scratches, the blood barely dry.

God...

She was so knocked back by the significance of this that she barely noticed Brigid moving away afterwards and Clancy taking her place.

Had Ben noticed it? Had Jane? Had she imagined it? Was it an hallucination? In the context of the Eucharist, These Things Happened. Immediately, she began to pray for guidance, for back-up, over Clancy’s dull gold hair.

Becoming aware at that moment of Jeremy Berrows, sitting back in the front row – Jeremy’s eyes wide, lit from two sides by candles. Jeremy’s eyes widening. Gazing beyond Merrily, upwards, back at Merrily.

‘The cup of life in Jesus Christ.’

‘Mum,’ Jane said faintly.

Merrily turned and saw, maybe, what Jeremy saw.

Its outline
might
have been conjured from the snowbanks joining the rising hills, and the jagged pine-tops, shadows against the first light. But yes, oh God, she saw it crouching there inside the leaded glass with its black haunches in the blue and its shadowy snout uplifted into the red where the first light was bleeding through. She saw it, and it was poised to bound.

No!

A coarse sucking sound sent her spinning back to the altar and the thick, dark blonde hair and
the cup of life in Jesus Christ
– Clancy’s hands around the chalice, Clancy’s lips...

She just stood and watched, her mind whirling, as Clancy trembled hard, as if in orgasm, and threw back her head and drank all the wine and smiled horribly up at Merrily with her black-cherry, glistening lips and eyes like small mirrors, a little candle-flame, a spark,
a sperrit
, in each of them.

In the very cold silence, Clancy burped and the wine spouted out of her.

Whoop
.

53

I
T WAS LIKE
one of those Victorian clockwork-tableau automatons that you wound up and things started happening, everything interconnected: Brigid Parsons pulsing to her feet and Alma, long practised in restraint, preventing her from moving from the spot, as Jeremy and Jane and Bliss converged and one of the altar candles self-snuffed.

Merrily was putting herself between all of them and Clancy, and shouting, ‘
Baptized?
’

Shouting out to Brigid, ‘
Has she been baptized?
’

Becoming aware that she hadn’t actually shouted it, just mouthed it, and Brigid was shaking her head.

‘That’s OK,’ Merrily said calmly. ‘That’s not a problem. We’ll see to it now.’ She smiled at Clancy and Clancy smiled faintly and vacantly back. ‘Clancy, you up for this?’

Keeping it casual. Playing down what was going to be something very big and crucial, because if this kid got spooked and took off...

Clancy didn’t respond, but she didn’t move away, just stood there like she’d been summoned to the head teacher’s office. Stood there in get-this-over mode. Not sullen or antagonistic, just tuned-out.

Which was dangerous, of course. Merrily lifted up her hands and felt a rush of adrenalin, endorphins, the electricity crackling.

Don’t get carried away. Concentrate
.

‘Shush,’ she said softly bringing her palms down, trying to lower the energy level in here because it was becoming negative – too many warring agendas. It was only a hotel dining room, it wasn’t a church, nothing to amplify emotions but no weight of worship to soothe them either. A playground for Hattie Chancery and whatever moved her, but the kitchen would have been worse.

People were back in their chairs, the clockwork winding down. Some hadn’t reacted, like Alistair Hardy, watching her with his head on one side, one arm apart from his body, the hand twitching, fingers flexing. Did she need him out of here? No, let it go. He wasn’t interfering; she had the sense of a spectator, no agenda.

Merrily turned to the altar and gathered up the decanter. This was about the essentials. No fuss... stripped down... clean and simple... the basics. It mustn’t be rushed, however. Keep it casual, but get it right, because this... well, this was a medieval baptism. This
was
the exorcism.

She was looking into Clancy’s face now – the kid avoiding her stare, which wasn’t hard; she was a good bit taller than Merrily. But this was what Clancy did, she avoided, retreated, did not get involved. The inherited curse of negative celebrity.

In the name of the Father, the Son, the...

When Clancy finally knelt, it was like hands were pushing her to her knees. Merrily was aware of Brigid Parsons drawing in a thin ribbon of breath and the placid, unmoving eyes of Jeremy Berrows. When she closed her eyes momentarily, she could see a ring of candles, tiny snail-shells of light.

She held on to the sense of assurance rising from her abdomen, her solar plexus, as she approached Clancy and the half-perceived form of the woman standing close behind her who was in dark, nondescript clothing, perhaps a two-piece suit, bust like a mantelpiece, close-curled hair, eyes like white marbles.

Taking the stopper from the bottle. Time passing. If there was a preamble, Merrily wasn’t aware of it.

‘Do you... reject the Devil and all rebellion against God?’

Nothing.

‘Say, “I reject them.” ’

Say it, for God’s—

Clancy looked confused. Her face was damp and florid in the crimson glare suffusing the room.

‘Clancy, say, “I reject them.” Say it, if... if you want to.’

Clancy rocked, losing her balance, the words tumbling out.

‘Do you renounce the deceit and corruption of evil? Say “I—” ’

‘I... renounce them...’

The cold sun hung in the red portion of the stained-glass window, like a blood-blister. When Merrily finally drew the cross on Clancy’s skin, she almost expected the water to boil and sizzle. It didn’t.

Anticlimax. No smoke, no mirrors.

It was always best.

Clearing away the remains of the Eucharist, after the baptism and the commendation, Merrily’s hands were weak, but there was still a dipping and rising in her spine, something finding its normal level.

Jane came to help her. At some point – good heavens – she actually squeezed Merrily’s hand.

‘Hey... not bad.’

‘Erm... thanks. Only it wasn’t—’

‘Yeah, I know. It wasn’t down to you. All the same, you could easily’ve blown it. Mum...’ Jane began to fold up the white tablecloth with the wine stains. ‘Is this... I mean, you know, is this
it
?’

‘No chance. I’ll probably be back three or four times. Could you... leave the cloth there, flower. Call this superstition...’

‘Oh... right.’

Clancy was at the bottom of the room with Brigid and Jeremy, Bliss and Alma a few yards away, giving them some space.

Merrily shook her head as the old concertina radiator began gonging dolefully behind her, squeezing a little heat back into Stanner Hall.

‘What happened to your wrist?’ Merrily said as they filed out into the lobby, she and Brigid side by side with Bliss in front, Alma close behind.

Brigid said nothing.

‘Happened on the rocks, didn’t it? Last night.’

Brigid shrugged and it turned into a shiver. Brigid was very pale now, pale enough to faint. They moved towards the reception desk, Mumford standing there, his face grey with stubble and no sleep. In the half-light, the lobby looked as dismal as an old hospital waiting room.

‘Brigid,’ Merrily said. ‘Tell me...’

‘All right, it happened on the rocks.’ Brigid turned to her, still walking. ‘Look, I just want to say, you know... thanks. I don’t know what you did, but maybe... maybe something happened. Even I think that. And I’m not impressionable. Not for a long time.’

‘Something probably did happen,’ Merrily said.

‘And I wanted to say... if you could maybe stay in touch with Jeremy, because he...’

‘I know.’

‘It could have happened for us. We were so close to it.’

‘I believe you were.’

On the reception desk, the phone was ringing. Mumford picked up.

‘I wish I’d known earlier,’ Merrily said. ‘I wish somebody had felt able to say something.’

She looked at Jeremy, who must have said more in the past few hours than in his entire adult life.

‘And Clancy...’ Brigid said.

‘Don’t worry.’

‘I’m not going to cry,’ Brigid said. ‘It’s not what killers do.’

Mumford said to Bliss, ‘It’s the DCI, boss.’

‘Tell her we’ve had word that the snowploughs’ve been through and we’re on our way.

‘Boss—’

‘Tell her we’ve gone.’

Merrily said, ‘That was Annie Howe, the head of Hereford CID. If you don’t make a full statement she’s going to give you a very hard time.’

‘That’ll be something to look forward to.’

Merrily said, ‘You see, the point is, that wrist injury – I saw it on Largo’s video.’

Brigid stopped. Alma said, ‘Keep moving, please, Brigid, directly to the porch.’

Then Clancy Craven was there, dragging on Alma’s arm, face all twisted up.

‘You’re not taking her! You’re not!
You can’t take her away!
’

Clancy started to scream. Merrily saw Jane behind her, looking upset, unsure how to respond. Jeremy watching her too, with an expression that, if you didn’t know him, you might interpret as anger. Jeremy turned and walked away towards the entrance as Brigid pushed in front of Alma, hugging Clancy. ‘Clan... it’ll be OK. It... Everything’s taken care of.’ Over Clancy’s shoulder, she said to Merrily, ‘Where did you see that video?’

‘Ben has it. Ben thinks it was shot a couple of days ago.’

Bliss was listening now.

‘But the fresh blood shows it had to have been between whatever happened on the rocks and you being brought in, right?’ Merrily said. ‘Did you get it when you beat Sebbie to death at the foot of the r—?’

‘
Merrily!
’ Bliss snarled.

Brigid said, ‘What?’

‘For fuck’s sake—’ Bliss spun round, ran to the door to Ben’s office behind reception, flung it open. ‘In! In there
now
!’

54

W
HEN
B
LISS
SAID
, ‘Clancy, would you and Jane like to fetch us all some of Mrs Foley’s incredible coffee?’ Clancy looked at her mother like this was some cheap trick and when she returned with the coffee all the police cars would have gone from the forecourt.

‘I promise you, Clancy,’ Bliss said, ‘we won’t leave the premises without you get another chance to see your mum, yeh?’

Clancy wouldn’t look at him but she went off with Jane. She hadn’t looked at Merrily either since the water had dried on her forehead. This could take months – years – of aftercare. It wasn’t magic.

Merrily put a new cigarette packet, open, on the desk, with the Zippo. On the front of the packet it said
Smokers Die Young
. Alma brought in a third chair and an ashtray, and Merrily sat facing Brigid, watching her smoke with a cautious relish, as if she was already banged-up.

‘Right.’ Bliss sat next to Merrily. ‘Where’s this video?’

‘You don’t need to see it now, Francis. Its existence is enough.’

‘Men just bloody lie to you all the time,’ Brigid said.

‘Meaning Largo?’

‘Some of us, on the other hand,’ Bliss said, ‘though we may seem like crass twats only looking for a result, have a profoundly spiritual core. Some of us might even be deeply shocked to think that a woman who’s just left a feller horribly unfaced should allow herself to be whisked away to be interviewed about it for the box. Something doesn’t ring true, in other words, Brigid.’

‘Could I talk to Merrily on her own?’

‘No, but you
can
talk to DCI Howe, who is also a woman – so I’ve been told. Can we cut the crap? I sometimes feel that a service like the one we’ve just attended can blow away the need for an awful lot of unnecessary evasion. Which goes for you, too, Reverend. In fact, you can start us off.’