To Dream of the Dead

to drop the second T from Matthew, if not to embrace

his destiny.

Lol said, ‘It is a bit curious, isn’t it?’

‘It’s crap.’

Merrily abruptly killed the images on the laptop. Stood up and walked over to the window overlooking the garden and the churchyard wall, the rain slanted by a rising wind. She felt twisted up inside. Behind her, Lol’s chair scraped on the flags.

‘Merrily, it’s only a—’

‘I wonder if he knows about this.’

‘Of course he knows,’ Lol said gently. ‘There must be five pages of links to this garbage on Google alone. He’s had threats, hasn’t he? That’s why he’s here.’

‘And I wonder if she knows.’

‘Shirley?’

‘If she knows he’s here. Or at least suspects he might be somewhere in the vicinity.’

‘Why would she?’ Lol’s hands on her shoulders. ‘We don’t know there’s a link between the website and Shirley’s church. And she’d hardly think that because you bought his book…’

‘If I hadn’t bought it, Amanda Rubens wouldn’t’ve reordered so fast. Extra copies? The same day? Which she puts at the front of the window?’

‘Maybe she thought you were going to slag off Stooke in a sermon, thus generating a few extra sales.’

‘Whatever, I wish I’d left it alone. And I wish I’d…’ Merrily stared out over the wall at the dulled sandstone of the church ‘… never met him.’

‘Oh Christ…’ Lol backed off. ‘You didn’t…’

‘Frannie Bliss said much the same as you. Leave well alone. Stooke eats vicars for breakfast.’

‘So naturally you had to rise to the challenge.’

‘It wasn’t like that.’ Or maybe it was. She turned away from the church and the rain. Everything seemed to be out of control. Everything was futile. Stooke was looming larger in the great scheme of things than he ought to have done. And Bliss saying, All the picturesque villages in all the world and he has to pick yours.

‘No coincidence,’ Lol said. ‘Wherever he ended up, there was always going to be a vicar.’

‘Anyway, we had a talk. Me being careful not to suggest I knew who he was.’

‘Wouldn’t the very fact of you turning up at his house convey that impression?’

‘I didn’t. Or rather I did, but he wasn’t in, and in the end I ran into him in Coleman’s Meadow. Checking out the dig. And got chatting, as you do.’

‘Not me.’

‘Yeah, well, in my profession, you can’t afford to be a recluse. And he was curious about what I did. I mean deliverance. Or rather he knew about it and he wanted to know more, and if I’d shown any reluctance, it would’ve looked…’

‘No, it wouldn’t. It’s the Bishop’s secret service. You keep saying that, and you don’t like giving talks to the WI, so why should you feel obliged to talk about it to a guy you just met in a field?’

‘It was how I felt at the time, because he wasn’t… what I expected. You read his book, you sense this colossal self-righteous rage. I mean, why, for God’s sake? Guy writes an angry book, we think he spends his life smashing things and beating up his wife?’

‘Nice person, then,’ Lol said.

‘Relaxed, balanced… almost charming. Don’t look at me like that, I’m being objective. With hindsight.’

‘You liked him.’

‘I… yeah, I probably did. It was an odd situation. I knew who he was, he didn’t know I knew, but he knew what I did. And then afterwards it’s all turned full circle and I’m annoyed with myself, I’m thinking, you idiot, he’s probably writing his follow-up to The Hole in the Sky. Am I going to be in it now, or what? The loopy exorcist with the pagan daughter?’

‘Bit of a comedown from the Dalai Lama.’

‘Oh God…’ Merrily started to laugh. ‘I could, on the other hand, be going just a little crazy, but it…’

Somewhere beyond the scullery a door banged.

‘… It all fits, doesn’t it? I was expecting anger, I got mildness. I was expecting monstrous ego, I got… almost self-deprecating. If I was Shirley West…’

‘Don’t even imagine what that would be like.’

‘No, listen. The atheist is an angry man, but Satan’s spin doctor is a charmer, who puts you at your ease, allays your susp — What’s the matter with that door?’

Banging again in the wind. It sounded like the side door to the yard, by the back stairs. Like something coming in and slamming it behind… Oh God, never log on to a born-again Christian website.

‘Excuse me a minute.’

Merrily went through into the low passage leading to the back stairs, where she caught the side door about to slam again in the wind. It hadn’t been closed properly. But then it shouldn’t have been open, rarely was these days since Jane had stopped regarding it as the private entrance to her apartment.

Odd.

She shut it firmly, locked it at the catch and stood there for a moment, listening.

‘Jane?’

No reply. Back in the scullery the phone was ringing. She heard Lol going through, picking up.

‘No, I’m sorry, she’s not here at the moment. Could I—? Oh…’

Merrily went quietly up the narrow back stairs to the main landing. No sound up here but the rain. The glass in the window at the top of the main stairs was in freeflow. She went up the second, narrower, stairs to the attic apartment.

Its door was ajar. She stopped outside, thought she could hear a faint snuffling.

‘Jane, is that…?’

Hesitated for just a moment before going in and seeing — heart-lurch — Jane lying face down on the bed. Fully dressed, with a damp pillow bent around her head.

32 In Your Veins

‘Lol,’ Eirion said. ‘Wow. Amazing.’

Standing in the entrance to the vicarage drive, bags either side of him on the wet gravel. His red and white baseball sweater looked too big. He’d lost weight. Less stocky, less archetypal-Welsh.

‘Bad down there?’ Lol said.

‘The Valleys — terrible,’ Eirion said. ‘It’s like somebody’s trying to turn them into reservoirs. I was thinking if I didn’t come today I might not get here at all. Tried to call Jane about six times. What’s the point of having a mobile if you keep it switched off? So I thought I’d better ring Mrs Watkins, make sure it was all right.’

Eirion looked around in the damp air. Lol sensed his nerves about meeting Jane again, more than three months since their lives had divided.

The light was still on in the attic. Not knowing any better, Lol had told Eirion on the phone that Jane was still out at Coleman’s Meadow, but they were expecting her back any minute. Putting the phone down just as Merrily had come briefly downstairs. Jane was up there. Jane had been badly upset. They needed some time.

‘So,’ Eirion said. ‘How are you, man? You’re looking well. Bit tired, maybe.’

‘Late nights.’

‘You’re working on something?’