The Cure of Souls

‘And meanwhile I’ll go down to the church, talk to the vicar and change. See you back here in… an hour, or less?’

‘Yes. Fine. Thank you.’

They went back through the living room, the former hop-store, where any extra light not blocked off by the barns was absorbed by drab leathery furniture – Stewart’s, probably. By the back door, Merrily turned, looked up at Stock.

‘Could I just ask you – what do want this to achieve? I mean you personally?’

He wasn’t ready for this one, didn’t meet her eyes. Instead, he went to open the door for her, and the day came in like a golden cavalry of angels.

‘I want things to be normal,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

She drove up to the minor road leading to Knight’s Frome and was almost through the village before she realized that it was the village. The church was out on the edge, the other side of the river; the white house nearby could only be the vicarage. No car outside.

She pulled on to the verge, about fifty yards away from the church, took off her jacket, threw it over the passenger seat, lit a cigarette and checked her mobile for messages.

Just the one. ‘Merrily. Sophie. I’m afraid I can’t raise the vicar, but Bernard says go ahead without him. He’ll clear up any political debris. Which I suppose means I shall.’

Right, then. Merrily switched off the phone and put out her cigarette. As she was climbing out of the Volvo, she saw, through the wing mirror, a rusting white Astra pulling in about twenty yards behind.

It was already hot, and not yet ten-fifteen. A single cloud powdered the sky over the church, which was low and comfortably sunken, with a part-timbered bell tower. Pigeons clattered in what had once been a hedge surrounding the vicarage.

From the car boot, Merrily pulled her vestment bag and a blue-and-gold airline case containing two flasks of holy water. She’d knock on the vicarage door, on the off chance someone was home. If not, she’d change in the church, always assuming it was open. Slinging the bags over her shoulder, she bent to lock the car. As she pulled out the key, there were footsteps behind her, a quiet padding on the grass. She turned quickly, wishing she hadn’t locked the car.

She froze.

The mirage was wearing a black T-shirt, jeans and those same round, brass-rimmed glasses. She was aware of the bird-song and the laboured chunter of a distant tractor as they stood and stared at one another for two long seconds.

He shuffled a little, nodded at the Radiohead motif on her chest. ‘So, er… what did you think of Kid A?’

‘Erm…’ Stunned, she put down the vestment bag, adjusted the plastic strap of the airline case. She swallowed. ‘Well… you know… it kind of grew on me. Parts of it.’

‘Uh huh.’ He nodded. Then he said rapidly, ‘Merrily, I’m sorry to, you know, spring out at you like this. I did come round to the vicarage quite early this morning, but—’

‘That – that was you knocking?’

‘But there was no answer, so I went to buy a Mars Bar and a paper at the shop, and then I ran into Gomer Parry and we talked for a few minutes and then… when I got back your car had gone.’

‘I… overslept.’ Merrily saw flecks of grey in his hair. It was shorter now; the ponytail hadn’t come back. She bit down on her smile, shaking her head. ‘You really choose your times, Lol.’

‘Because you’re working.’

‘Yeah. I mean, could we…? I mean…’

‘Gerard Stock, right?’

She felt the smile die completely.

‘As… as you know,’ Lol said hesitantly, ‘I’m about the last person to try and tell you anything about your job. But… don’t do this.’

‘What?’

‘Put him off – could you do that? Stall him? Please?’

‘I… No. No, I can’t do that.’

‘Then at least come and talk to the vicar,’ Lol said.

19 And then… Peace

THE VESTRY AT Knight’s Frome was about the size of a double wardrobe and didn’t have a proper door, never mind a lock. She had Lol stand guard just inside the church porch while she changed.

This was getting crazy, too much to take.

She unpacked the bag: full kit plus pectoral cross.

Jane, of course – Jane would love this situation, wouldn’t she just? All the times in the past six months the kid had asked innocently, ‘Have you heard from Lol? Has Lol been in touch? Does Lol spend all his weekends in Wolverhampton…?

Merrily took off her skirt and T-shirt, got into the cassock that she never wore except for services, since a certain incident.

Laurence Robinson: palely sensitive singer-songwriter – in downbeat, low-key, minor chords. Unlucky in love, survivor of a nervous breakdown and some years of psychiatric treatment. Might well have become the next Nick Drake – Q magazine. If, like poor Nick, he’d killed himself, the less satisfactory route to immortality.

But Lol had survived to become droll, self-deprecating and, from Jane’s point of view, dangerously cool. The stepfather to die for. And flirt with, obviously.

Merrily did up all the fabric-covered buttons of the cassock. Fortunately the kid was away. Her own feelings she could control, up to the present.

The last time she’d seen Lol Robinson had been on Dinedor Hill, above Hereford, where a few days earlier a young woman’s death had been shatteringly avenged – leaving Lol in the middle of steaming wreckage with two people dead and one dying. Heavy trauma. In a still December dusk, before Christmas, the two of them had stood next to a fallen beech tree on the edge of the Celtic hill fort and looked down over the city, where steeples and the Cathedral tower were aligned under a shadow of cloud and the distant Black Mountains.

A prayer, a meditation, in remembrance of the victims and then they’d walked back down the hill, hand in hand. And then Lol, no big fan of organized religion, had told her he was wondering if there wasn’t some middle way between spiritual guidance and psychotherapy… a new path, maybe. And they’d walked away to their separate cars and she’d known in her heart that they would meet again sometime, at least as friends, but that this wasn’t the moment to allow things to go further.

Lol Robinson. Just about the last person she’d expected to meet today, materializing in a heat haze at the roadside. And, more confusingly, revealed as one of the anti-Stock contingent warning her to back off.

Like she had a choice.

Abandoning attempts to contact Merrily, Lol had been on the road by seven a.m., knowing that if he didn’t catch her before she went out, she could be anywhere in the diocese and there’d be no chance of talking to her until she arrived at Stock’s tonight – by which time it would be too late.

I truly hope your friend has the sense not to get involved, Simon had said. And then, last night, Isabel: He gets things he can’t put into words.

When he found Merrily had left the vicarage, he’d gone into Hereford, checked the Bishop’s Palace parking area, then called the office to make sure she wasn’t there. Mrs Hill remembered him but wouldn’t tell him where Merrily had gone. She’d offered to pass on a message; Lol said it was OK, no problem. He’d decided to stake out the entrance to Stock’s place, all day if necessary, to catch her before she could go in.

But he’d arrived back in Knight’s Frome to find she was already there. Shoved the car into some bushes, gone running down the gravel track by the kiln, about to go and hammer on the door, disrupt whatever was