The Cure of Souls

painted different colours.’

‘Good example,’ Charlie said. ‘Most listed-buildings officers would let that one go, because you can always paint them over again in white. Brother Shelbone – forget it. A stickler. Told one of our lady councillors she had to take down a conservatory porch she’d put on her farmhouse. When the good councillor tries to square it with the department under the table, it gets leaked to the press. Red faces all round. That’s David Shelbone: staunch Christian, not for sale.’

‘And that’s bad, is it?’

Charlie grinned. ‘Oh, it’s not bad. It’s good, it’s remarkable – and that’s the point. In the world of local government, a very religious man who cannot tell a lie or condone dishonesty of any kind is remarkable.’

‘Meaning a pain in the bum.’

‘Correct. It was widely thought that when the councils were all reorganized, he’d get mislaid, as it were, in the changeover. But he survived.’

He looks after the old places, makes sure nobody knocks them down or tampers with them. Hazel Shelbone in the church. They offered him early retirement last year, but he said he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.

Merrily licked jam from a finger. ‘His wife indicated he’d been under some pressure.’ Migraines, Hazel had explained. ‘Maybe that’s not been a happy household for a while.’

She didn’t look at Charlie Howe, helped herself to a second scone. Anything said to her by Mrs Shelbone ought to be treated as confidential; on the other hand, Charlie expected give and take. After forty years in the police and now local government, it would be how his mind worked.

‘Pressure,’ he said. ‘Oh, no question about that. Brother Shelbone’s under serious pressure. Over Barnchurch alone.’

‘The new trading estate, up past Belmont?’

‘Source of much weeping and gnashing of teeth,’ Charlie confirmed.

‘Well, it looks awful,’ Merrily said. ‘There was a time, not too many years ago, when Hereford used to resemble a country town. I mean, do we really need a supermarket every couple of hundred yards? DIY world? Computerland? It’s like some kind of commercial purgatory between rural paradise and traffic hell.’

‘My, my.’ Charlie added cream to his coffee.

‘Nothing personal.’

He leaned back, hands clasped behind his head. ‘What do you know about the origins of Barnchurch? The history of the site.’

‘Fields and woodland, home to little birds and animals.’

‘Gethyn Bonner? You know about him?’

‘Not a thing.’

‘Thought you’d know about Gethyn Bonner. He was a preacher. Came up from the Valleys in the 1890s, sometime like that.’

‘Ten a penny,’ Merrily said with a small smile.

‘Tell a few of my colleagues that. Tell English Heritage.’

‘I’m not following.’

‘Gethyn Bonner was an itinerant firebrand preacher with a big following, who came out of Merthyr Tydfil and decided Hereford was the land of milk and honey.’

‘As you do.’

Charlie drank some coffee. ‘Hadn’t got a chapel of his own, but a good Christian farmer, name of Leathem Baxter, had a barn to spare. A few local worthies, including a craftsman builder, all gathered round and they put a big Gothic window in the back wall, and in no time at all Leathem Baxter’s barn was a bona fide church.’

‘Barnchurch.’

‘Exactly. Well, in time, Gethyn Bonner falls out of favour, as these fellers are apt to do, and moves on up to Birmingham or back to the Valleys, I wouldn’t know which, and Leathem Baxter dies and the church becomes a barn again, and the Gothic window gets bricked up… and it’s all forgotten until the Third Millennium comes to pass.’

‘And, lo, there came property developers…’ said Merrily.

‘Barnchurch Trading Estate Phase One. Should be completed in time for Christmas shopping. Phase Two, however… that’s the problem. Nothing in its way except a derelict agricultural building, not very old – Victorian brick – and falling to bits.’

‘I see.’ Merrily poured some spring water.

‘Well, even before work started on Phase One, the developers had been assured by the Hereford planners that there’d be no bar at all to flattening this unsightly structure – which, as it happens, also blocks the only practical entrance to the site of Phase Two. Reckoning, of course, without Brother Shelbone.’

‘Suddenly, I like him a lot.’

‘Who helpfully points out that, although the building itself is of limited architectural merit and not, in fact, very old, its historical curiosity value makes it a monument well meriting preservation.’

‘It’s fair enough,’ Merrily said. ‘They should’ve consulted him before they started.’

Charlie leaned forward. ‘Merrily, nobody in their right mind consults David Shelbone, they just pray he’s otherwise engaged at the time. Brother Shelbone gets involved, it’s gonner cost you: time and money. And the stress factor.’

‘So he’s put a preservation order on the Barnchurch. Can he do that on his own?’

‘What he does is gets it spot-listed. It then goes to the Council, with a report and a recommendation from Shelbone. Well, this is seen as a very significant project, with considerable economic benefits for the city, and the Council, by a small majority, goes against the advice of the Listed Buildings Officer and declares that the Barnchurch can be flattened.’

‘I don’t remember reading about this in the papers.’

Charlie smiled thinly. ‘The authority has a certain leeway these days to conduct business not considered to be in the public interest less publicly.’

‘Which stinks, of course.’

‘But is quite legitimate. Anyway, David Shelbone isn’t a man to be put off by petty local tyranny. He goes directly to the body responsible for conservation of historic buildings – English Heritage – and they step in. So then—’

‘Which way did you vote, Charlie? Just so we know where we are.’

Charlie Howe grinned, whipped cream on his teeth. ‘I abstained, of course.’

‘Ah.’

‘Didn’t really think I knew enough about the issue.’

‘Why do I find that hard to believe? So, can English Heritage overrule the Hereford Council?’

‘Not just like that. It’ll have to go to Central Government for a decision. Because what had happened, see, was that the developers had already lodged an appeal contesting the scheduling of an old heap of bricks as a building of historical merit. There’ll be a public inquiry before an inspector from the Department of Culture – or the Ministry of Arty-farty Time-wasters, as one of my colleagues likes to call them.’

‘Which will take time to organize, I suppose.’

‘Months and months – and then more months waiting for a decision. Even if they get the green light at the end of the day, it’s going to’ve cost the developers a vast amount of money, what with all the delays and their contracts with prestigious national chains on the line. In the meantime, some of those firms are bound to go elsewhere. The situation is that Barnchurch Phase Two’s already looking like a financial disaster on a serious scale.’

‘And all because of one man.’

‘You got it.’

‘Who are the developers?’ Merrily asked.

‘Firm called Arrow Valley Commercial Properties.’

Merrily shook her head. ‘Not heard of them.’

‘Subsidiary of Allan Henry Homes,’ said Charlie. ‘You with me, now?’