The Cure of Souls

bit official.’

‘I wish you would.’

‘I will, son, no skin off my nose. There, that wasn’t too hard, was it? I get very upset about how nobody wants to talk to us any more in case it gets taken down and used in evidence.’ Bliss patted Lol on the shoulder. ‘See, from Merrily’s point of view, what would need to be shown was that Stock wasn’t just a dangerous mental case who only needed his blue touchpaper lighting – by, say, an unwise exorcism carried out without due forethought, et cetera, et cetera – but in fact an intelligent man forced by circumstances to grapple with possibilities to which he’d not normally have given houseroom.’

Lol noticed Merrily on the other side of the gate. She was talking to one of the uniformed coppers. She had her shoulder bag and her jacket draped over an arm.

‘Looks like this is the bit where I’m called on to fence for a while with Henry’s foxy brief,’ Frannie Bliss said.

‘Um, there’s something else.’

‘Quick as you can, Lol.’

‘It’s likely Stewart Ash had an unfinished manuscript suggesting Conrad Lake as Rebekah Smith’s killer. Also some pictures – photographs – that Lake took of Rebekah, naked, with a hop-bine wound around her… the two most important elements in his life, maybe.’

‘Or a sadomasochistic symbol of Mr Lake’s dominance, if she was tied up in the bine, Lol.’

‘That too. Anyway, we know Stewart had them in his possession, and that they’ve disappeared. Be interesting to know if the Smith boys did nick them, and if they got a chance to pass them over to someone before they were arrested. I mean, how long after the killing were the boys brought in? Could they have hidden the papers and photos somewhere? Could that stuff still be found?’

Bliss nodded. ‘All right. I’ll check it out. Might take a day or two, and I might not be able to tell yer even if I do come up wid something, but you’ll know the info’s in good hands. Thanks, son. Anything else you think of, you know where to get me. Leominster or Bromyard, usually.’

He moved towards the gates. Lol followed him.

‘So what exactly… has Howe got planned?’

‘Well, it won’t come from her, will it? It’ll come from the Chief Constable.’ Bliss stopped. ‘Not a word, OK? You can tell Merrily, and that’s it.’

‘OK.’

‘I mean it, Laurence. I fuck’n hate this politicking, but I’m not gonna lose me job over it.’

‘Sure.’

‘Right, this is it. Annie’s suggesting the Chief puts out a press statement on the lines of, if the Church can’t be relied on to police itself on matters of irresponsible exorcism, without psychiatric back-up and the like, then it should be made far more open to legal redress. Words to that effect.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘I only wish it were so, pal.’

‘What’s the bottom line?’

‘The bottom line, Lol, is that the Chief Constable of West Mercia puts his name behind the suggestion that a priest who performs an exorcism that has unfortunate consequences should subsequently be held legally responsible for those consequences. In this case, for instance, we could even be looking at manslaughter.’

Merrily came through the gate. She looked worried. She was digging in her bag for a cigarette.

Lol said, ‘They’d want… that she could actually go to prison?’

‘That’s extreme, but,’ Bliss shrugged, ‘this could serve as an important precedent. Chances are nothing’ll come of it – I mean, they repealed the Witchcraft Act, didn’t they? But it’ll certainly make everybody very nervous for a good while.’

‘The Church has no balls,’ Lol said. ‘No bishop in this country would ever sanction an exorcism again.’

He watched Merrily coming towards them, the ruby glow of the cigarette between her fingers. It wasn’t the wider issue that worried him so much as what it would do to her. Prison – OK, unthinkable. But being identified as ‘the precedent’ would, for Merrily, be immeasurably worse.

The pariah. Goodbye to the clergy, obviously. And then what? He’d never fully come to terms with the awesome concept of her as a curer of souls. But ex-Rev. Watkins, the disgraced former priest – the consequences of that didn’t bear thinking about.

He couldn’t tell her. He had to do something.

‘As Father Flanagan used to say to us when we missed mass,’ Frannie Bliss winked, without humour, acquired an Irish accent, ‘ding-ding, and there’s another round to the Devil.’

42 Witch Trials

THERE WAS A screen behind the altar in the Barnchurch. Not a rood screen but the sort of concertina thing women used to toss their robes over in Victorian bathrooms.

The grey-white figure was hanging from this screen like a giant moth.

Jane stayed back. The face was chipped and grotesque: the face of a black, dress-shop dummy, greasy white rings smeared around the eyes.

‘People touch her clothes, usually,’ Layla Riddock said, weaving in the candlelight, ‘for healing.’

Jane recalled Kirsty: Gypsies got their own virgin – like a patron saint or a goddess – the Black Virgin.

‘Sara,’ Layla Riddock said carelessly. ‘Yes, she helps. Amy’s had so much starchy religion pumped into her that we have to bring her down slowly. Sara’s the Black Virgin, and you can view that two ways, can’t you? A saint or an inversion – or a semi-Christian mother goddess. All ways, she helps. Amy’s finding her true mother. And, through that, her true self.’

‘Where is Amy?’ Eirion said.

‘Haven’t you taught him any other words yet, Jane?’ Layla tossed her hair. Jane was realizing for the first time how scarily intelligent she was. ‘Watch my lips. I – don’t – know. Perhaps she went home. Perhaps she’s walking the streets. Perhaps she let a rapist in.’

‘Don’t,’ Jane shouted, ‘talk like that.’

… alk like at… The walls sent back the echo. This was a big, empty place, bigger than the average parish church. Layla seemed very much at home here.

‘Your mother came to see Allan,’ she said. ‘And me.’

‘What?’

‘Yesterday. She was with another woman, from the Cathedral, looking for Amy. Didn’t you know?’

‘No.’

‘That’s funny, because it sounded like someone had told her all about the Steve’s Shed Experience.’

‘So?’ Jane had backed up against something low and hard, an old manger.

‘Well, that wasn’t a very nice thing to do, grass up your mates, was it? And it caused a nasty little row between me and Allan, making it difficult to get away tonight. I arranged to meet Amy here, but I’m late, and now she’s pissed off. Anything could’ve happened to her. All because you had to blab.’

‘What do you expect me to do? My mum was in a hassle with the Bishop, because Amy had laid it all on me. Because she was scared to put you in the frame. What was I supposed to do?’

Layla shook her head in disgust. The ring in her navel shone like the edge of a coin. Jane was bewildered and furious with herself. How could she have let all this get turned around?

‘Anyway,’ she found herself saying petulantly, ‘it was you who set her up.’

‘This is Kirsty again, yeah?’

‘It’s the truth, though, isn’t it? You hated that family ever since her old man got your fortune-telling act