Down the hill, into the forestry land, until she came to the point where there were farm buildings either side of the road and a Land Rover with a ‘Christ is the Light’ sticker. Oh, he had his uses, did Jesus Christ: the very name served as a disinfectant.
Merrily turned in to a rutted track between two stone and timbered barns, and there was the farmhouse, grey brown, black windows. No garden, just a yard of dirt and brown gravel, where she parked the Volvo. There was a glazed front porch, its door hanging ajar. She saw the interior door swing open before she was even into the porch, and Judith Prosser standing there, cool and rangy in her orange rugby shirt.
‘You’re late, Mrs Watkins. Had you down for an early riser, I did.’
The banter was wrapped around Judith’s need always to be ahead of the situation. This visit must, on no account, be seen as a surprise.
‘Late night, Mrs Prosser.’
‘I’ve coffee on.’
‘That would be good... Erm, I felt there were things left in the air from last night.’
‘No bad thing, sometimes,’ Judith replied swiftly. ‘Left in the air, they have a chance to blow away.’
‘But sometimes they stick around and the air goes sour, and that’s not a good thing in my experience.’
‘Oh,
‘You have a problem with profound?’ Merrily blinked. It was dark inside and the hulking furniture made it darker.
‘Life’s too short to tolerate problems.’
‘Life’s too short for cover-ups, Mrs Prosser,’ Merrily said.
Judith turned to face her. They were standing in a square hall dominated by a huge, over-ornate chair with a nameplate on the back. It looked like the seat of a council chairman or a presiding magistrate. Judith leaned an elbow on one of its carved shoulders.
‘As I said last night, it would be stupid for you to react to silly rumours.’
‘Here’s the situation,’ Merrily said. ‘I was there, I saw the whole thing: the cross, the petroleum jelly. Also Dr Coll standing in the doorway – and didn’t
Judith Prosser flicked a speck of dust or ash from the point of the chairman’s chair.
‘I’m not sure how far from being a police matter this is,’ Merrily continued, ‘but we’re very close to finding out.’
45
Stupid Wires
JANE TYPED IN the word ‘charismatic’. The usual, mainly irrelevant list appeared. She grabbed the mouse, dithered over ‘Charismatic Q and A’.
‘Try it,’ Eirion suggested. ‘Might lead somewhere better.’ On the screen: ‘The Charismatic Movement: what in the name of God is it all about?’
‘Click,’ Eirion said.
There was a list of options. Jane clicked on ‘Yes, I want to talk to God.’
They needed all the help they could get.
Sophie had said she shouldn’t be allowing this, before shutting them in the Deliverance office with the computer.
And she wanted copies of anything they found.
Jane had said, ‘This is awfully good of you... Mrs Hill.’
Collecting a contemptuous frown and, ‘Jane, you are not among the people with whose patronage I can cope. Try “evangelism”.’
On the way here, Jane had told Eirion virtually everything she’d learned so far – about Terry Penney, about pentagrams... The poor little Chapel boy had seemed unnerved, regaining his cool only when he saw the computer. Smiling his famous smile at Sophie, who wore a checked woollen skirt with a grey twinset and pearls – Sophie, who might one day be the last person in the entire universe still wearing a twinset and pearls.
Jane clicked again, losing enthusiasm for talking to God. When it was working fast and well, the Internet could give you the illusion of
‘Evangelism’, though, had been a bummer. There were background articles on St John the Evangelist. There were four Web sites about some kind of computer software with that name. There were no obvious links into crank preachers in the American South who might have known Nick Ellis; and ‘Charismatics’ proved little better.
‘I could try “Bible Belt”,’ Eirion offered.
‘You’d probably get suppliers of religious fashion accessories,’ Jane said gloomily.
‘ “Cults”?’
‘No chance. People never think of themselves as being in a cult. “Just off to the cult, don’t wait up” – doesn’t happen.’
‘What we need is a Christian search engine.’
‘What we need is divine intervention.’ Jane walked over to the window which overlooked the forecourt of the Bishop’s Palace. No good searching for it out there.
‘OK,’ Eirion said. ‘What are we
‘Some big, rattling skeleton in Ellis’s vestment closet. Something that maybe caused him to leave America, come back here in a hurry. When you think about it, most Brits who go over to the States tend to stay there, making piles of money. So it’s reasonable to think Ellis came back because something happened to make him kind of persona non grata. Like he was the leader of a mass suicide cult who contrived not to go down with the rest.’
‘We’d have heard about it.’
‘We’re stuffed.’ Jane angrily keyed in ‘loony fundamentalist bastards’, and the Web found, for some no doubt entirely logical reason, a bunch of science fiction and fantasy writers including David Wingrove, David Gemmell and Kirk Blackmore.
‘We’re just not asking the right questions.’
‘Kirk Blackmore... where did I hear that?’
Sophie came in then, with a piece of paper, a name written on it. ‘Try this.’
‘Ah,’ Jane said, as Blackmore came up on the screen. ‘This was the guy whose covers Robin Thorogood was going to design, but they pulled the plug.’
Eirion was staring up at Sophie, bewildered.
‘I used the telephone.’ Sophie inclined her neck, swan-like. ‘It’s rather old-tech, it involves the less-exact medium of human speech, but it does tend to be more effective when dealing with the clergy.’
‘ “Marshall McAllman”,’ Eirion read.
‘Before the Reverend Nicholas Ellis came to New Radnor and then Old Hindwell, he was a curate for just over a year at a parish outside Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I’ve talked to his former vicar, the Reverend Alan Patterson, who only found out after the Reverend Mr Ellis had been with him for several months that he’d previously been a personal assistant to the Reverend Mr McAllman – which did not entirely please him.’
