The Cure of Souls

‘All right, it’s a tough one,’ he admitted. ‘Needs thought, prayer.’

‘Or the toss of a coin?’

‘Get off to bed, Merrily,’ Huw growled.

She lay in bed, with Ethel the cat in the cleft in the duvet between her knees. She slept eventually. She dreamed, over and over, that the phone was ringing. She dreamed of a withering foetus inside her and awoke, sweating, and then closed her eyes, visualizing a golden cross in blue air above her, and slept again and awoke – something coming back to her from the night in the church. And she thought, Justine?

Awakening, stickily, into blindingly mature sunlight and the echoey squeak-and-clang of the cast-iron knocker on the front door.

Panic. Jane would be late for—Stumbling halfway downstairs, dragging on her towelling robe before she realized there was no Jane to worry about. The knocking had long stopped; she didn’t know how long it had been going on, and now the phone was shrilling. She dragged open the front door, and found nobody there. She ran through to the scullery, saw she’d left the anglepoise lamp on all night, and grabbed the phone.

‘Oh. I was begining to think you’d left already.’

‘Sophie—? Oh God, what time is it?’

‘It’s just gone eight. Are you all right?’

‘Er – yeh. Sorry, I… Late night.’

‘You haven’t forgotten Mr Stock?’

‘Mr S—?’

‘The haunted hop-kiln,’ Sophie said. ‘You’re due there by nine, remember? I made an appointment for you?’

‘Oh shit…’

‘Merrily, I was ringing to warn you that we’ve had more calls from the press. The People asked if they could be there – exclusively – for the exorcism. We said on no account. We also declined to confirm that there was going to be an exorcism. Also, more alarming as far as the Bishop was concerned, the religious affairs correspondent of the Daily Telegraph—’

‘Did you know Amy Shelbone had tried to kill herself?’

‘What?’

‘Consequently, I need to speak to both the Shelbones. I think I’ve finally got some idea of what it’s about. Now, obviously they’re not going to want to speak to me, after what—’

‘Is the child all right?’

‘I think so. I don’t know. I haven’t had—’

‘I’ll talk to them. I’ll arrange something if I can. Merrily. Meanwhile… I hate to do this over the phone, and I did try to reach you last night but you were constantly engaged… I have to tell you the Bishop would like you to expedite this hop-kiln thing with the minimum fuss and the minimum publicity. He doesn’t want it dragged out. He doesn’t want to see you walking out of there into a circus of flashbulbs and TV lights.’

‘Sophie, it’s not that big a story.’

‘His exact words, as I recall, were… “Tell her to throw some holy water around and then leave by the back door.” ’

‘Put a bottle in the post and do the rest down the phone, shall I?’

‘He’s nervous, Merrily. Since the Ellis affair, where Deliverance is concerned, he’s been like the proverbial cat on hot bricks. Rarely a day goes by when he doesn’t ask me if we have a shortlist yet, for the panel.’

‘Meaning he doesn’t quite trust me.’

‘He’s nervous,’ Sophie repeated. ‘And once he finds out about this attempted suicide, he’s going to be very nervous indeed. Fortunately, he’s leaving at ten for a three-day conference in Gloucester. Transsexuality in the clergy. Should absorb his attention for a while.’

‘Three days?’

‘This year alone, surgery has increased the number of female clergy in Britain by four,’ Sophie said dryly.

‘I need to speak to Simon St John, obviously. I trust he’s not in the operating theatre.’

Sophie made a small noise indicating it wouldn’t surprise her unduly. ‘I shall call him and tell him you’re on your way. Just… go.’

‘I’ll call you when it’s over,’ Merrily said. ‘Whatever the hell it turns out to be.’

18 Lightform

‘AND THIS IS where…?’

‘You’re standing on it,’ Mr Stock said.

Although a despicable shiver had started somewhere below her knees, Merrily made a point of not moving.

‘The police, it seems, don’t operate a cleaning service,’ he said. ‘So we could hardly avoid knowing precisely where it was.’

They were standing, just the two of them, on stone flags in the circular kitchen at the base of the kiln-tower. The place had a churchy feel, because of its shape and its shadows. The light was compressed into three small windows, like square port-holes, above head height – above Merrily’s, anyway. And it was cold. Outside, July; in here, November – what was that about?

It’s about doing your job, isn’t it? It’s about not prejudging the issue on second-hand evidence.

She let the shiver run its course, let it sharpen her focus.

She’d driven over here with a head full of Amy Shelbone and Layla Riddock and Jane – everybody but Gerard Stock, whose problem had been devalued because he was allegedly a professional conman, a manipulator, a spin- doctor.

And then you walked out of a summer morning into this temple of perpetual gloom, and it came home to you, in hard tabloid flashes, that a man had actually been beaten to death, in cold blood, right here where you were standing, his face, his skull repeatedly crunched into these same stone flags.

Violent death would often have psychic repercussions; you knew that.

Then there was Gerard Stock himself – bombastic, bit of an operator, possible drink problem. This morning Gerard Stock was wearing a clean white shirt and cream-coloured slacks. His hair was slicked down and his beard trimmed. The impression you had was that Mr Stock had bathed this morning in the hope of washing away the weariness in his bones, changed into clothes that would make him feel crisp and fresh. But the weariness remained in his bleary eyes and the sag of his shoulders.

If this was an act, he was good.

‘There are… two different versions of the story.’ He was standing with his back to the cold Rayburn stove that sat on a concrete plinth, probably where the old furnace had once been. His voice was as arid as cinders. ‘The prosecution’s submission was that Stewart had been in bed upstairs – alone – when the boys broke in.’

‘Boys?’

‘Glen and Jerome Smith, nineteen and seventeen. Travellers. Members of their family had been helping Stewart with his research into the links between the gypsies and the Frome Valley hop farms. He’d bought the boys drinks in the Hop Devil, paid them also in cash for their “research assistance” – mainly a question of finding Romanies who were willing to talk to him. But, according to the prosecution, the Smiths got greedy, and they came to believe he had a fair bit of money on the premises.’

Merrily looked around. No indications of wealth and no obvious hiding places in a circular room that didn’t