The Cure of Souls

and then the lights were full in Jane’s eyes.

‘It’s coming out!’ Eirion yelled. He started to drag her back into the rhododendrons.

Jane heard Mrs Shelbone scream, saw the woman throwing herself in panic across the bonnet of the Renault as the yellow car came through the gates. There was a vicious scraping of metal on metal, a small splintering crunch as it tore a tail light from the Renault and spun off into the bushes, no more than a foot from Jane’s legs, to get past and back onto the drive. She heard tyres spinning and then the wheels hit the tarmac, skidding, and the car took off into the night, and Jane yelled,

‘Layla!’

Eirion was frantic. ‘You OK? Jane? Jane!’ Feverishly pushing foliage aside, like he might find both her legs severed at the thighs.

‘That was Layla Riddock!’ Jane cried. ‘Where’s the car? Get after her!’ Her legs worked. She began to run back up the drive. ‘Come on!’

‘What?’

‘Please, Irene, go, go, go – go!’

Nice idea. Quick thinking in the circs. Except that when the BMW reached the lane, there was no sign of the yellow car. She could have gone either way, either left towards Dilwyn or right to Hereford. Jane was sobbing in frustration, scanning the horizon for tail lights, but the horizon was no more than five yards away, here: high hedges either side of the twisty road.

‘Right! Irene, go right!’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know, but we’ve got to try something. It just seems more likely. Just do it.’

‘Call the police.’ Eirion was poised at the junction, holding the car on the clutch. ‘The phone’s on the dash. Dial 999.’

‘And tell them what?’

‘Tell them there’s a disturbance at Allan Henry’s. Tell them you’re a neighbour and you heard crashing and screams.’

‘There aren’t any neighbours. Please, Irene, go – go!’

‘Call the police! And if you really want to help the Shelbones, give the cops our names as witnesses.’

‘Oh, all right!’ Jane stabbed at the phone, and Eirion sent Gwennan’s car racing towards Hereford, Jane half hoping that after a couple of hundred yards they’d find the yellow sports car upended in some ditch.

‘Emergency – which service?’

‘Police.’

Eirion made pained noises as Jane described the sounds of what could have been a massacre coming from the Henry spread, and then conveniently got cut off.

‘Why the hell did you—?’

‘Just keep going, Irene.’

‘Why? What’s the point?’

‘Haven’t you figured this out yet?’

‘Forgive me, I’m Welsh.’

‘She’s got the kid in the car,’ Jane said. ‘She’s got Amy.’

Merrily was breathing again. In the confining darkness of Lol’s car, they’d approached the absurd, cornered the chimera… been able to talk about something that otherwise might have remained undiscussed, possibly for ever, putting a permanent distance between them – a gap that might never have been crossed.

Now, she was feeling closer to Lol than she had to anyone except for Jane, Sophie sometimes and – curiously – Gomer Parry, since first coming to Ledwardine and taking on this impossible job and discovering that the people she could trust to try and understand her were all too few.

Ironically, Lol remained unconvinced about the threat posed by Layla Riddock – maybe because, without her, they wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have reached this level of communication.

‘She’s seventeen,’ he said as they neared Canon Pyon. ‘She’s just a rich girl with a hobby.’

‘However,’ she reminded him, ‘she clearly believes that being half-gypsy gives her access, a power base.’

‘Imaginary power base.’

‘And she’s now got remarkable influence over one of the richest developers in the county.’

‘It happens.’

‘Taking over his house, his bed? From her own mother?’

‘She’s a young girl, he’s a rich middle-aged man,’ Lol said sadly. ‘The gypsy magic could be entirely superfluous.’

‘And the fact that she’s also assuming responsibility for conserving and regenerating his finances? And somehow being allowed to?’

‘It’s not a fact, though, is it?’ Lol said. ‘It’s only what she thinks. He scatters her mystical charms and talismans around, it keeps her sweet. He doesn’t believe any of it, and they both know it won’t last.’

‘Maybe.’ She watched Lol driving, the slit-eyed alien on his sweatshirt lit green by the dashlights. The mature woman’s dream: a nice-looking man who, targeted by a young girl, any young girl, could be firmly relied on to run like hell. ‘So, what about the persecution of the Shelbones? It starts as a game, becomes a serious fixation for the persecutor as well as for the principal victim. And it’s working.’

‘Why is it working?’

‘It just does,’ Merrily said.

‘Black magic just works?’

‘In the short term, it works. People who go down that road find they can get what they want very quickly. Then it starts to mess them up and they can’t get out. I’m not being metaphysical here. Pure, calculated evil works, short-term, because it nearly always takes us by surprise. We’re not conditioned to turn the corner and meet the man with the knife.’

‘And what happens when we are conditioned?’

‘Then maybe we also start to carry knives,’ Merrily said miserably. ‘Then it gets ugly. Hang on, Lol, I think we’ve just passed the turning.’

She’d spotted a man standing by the roadside, smoking a cigarette.

Lol pulled in and reversed. The man threw down his cigarette and stamped on it. The Astra drew level with him. Merrily wound down her window.

‘Good morning, Reverend Watkins,’ Allan Henry said wearily.

On the edge of the Holmer industrial estate, at the top of Hereford, there were temporary traffic lights. They took for ever to change. There was already a great wide Dutch container lorry waiting at the lights.

‘Mum was right after all,’ Jane said. ‘There is a God.’

Behind the container lorry, its headlights full on, was a chrome-yellow Mazda sports car. Its driver kept revving impatiently. It was clear that if it hadn’t been for the Dutch lorry, this particular driver would have shot the lights.

‘Just as I was convinced we’d got it wrong and Layla had just kindly taken her home to Dilwyn,’ Jane said.

‘We’d got it wrong?’

‘Just don’t lose the slag.’

Eirion said nothing. This was not such a happy development for him, evidently.

Over the old city, the moon was very bright. You could see right across to the hills and Wales beyond. Jane didn’t think she’d ever felt so wide awake.

40 Bleed Dry