Midwinter of the Spirit

evening when all the shops were closed and the hanging signs became black, romantic silhouettes.

The flat over the shop called John Barleycorn – one of Moon’s brother’s shops – had been semi-derelict when Moon had first lived here. This was when she was helping with the archaeological excavation in the Cathedral Close, before the digging site was released for a new building to house the Mappa Mundi and the Chained Library. More than a thousand skeletons had been unearthed, and Moon had spent her days among the dead and her nights on a camp bed in this same flat. Walking out each morning to the Cathedral – the dream developing.

She kept a photograph of herself holding two medieval skulls from the massive charnel pit they’d found – all three of them wearing damaged grins. When the excavation ended and the bones were removed, Moon wanted to stay on there and Denny wanted her to leave, so there was tension, and soon afterwards Moon stole the skirts from Next, and the police found her stoned on the Castle Green. And that was when Dick had finally agreed to renovate the flat over the shop as a proper home for her.

Moon had seemed fairly content here in Capuchin Lane. Only Dinedor Hill, in fact, could have lured her away – and it did.

Lol, in need of somewhere to live, had then himself taken over the flat. Denny was glad about that, as it meant Lol could keep an eye on Moon during her working hours, and watch out for any hovering dope-dealers.

He had his key to the side door, but went in through the shop to report to Denny.

Moon’s much older, and very much bulkier, brother sat on a stool behind the counter, trying to tune a balalaika. Although there was only one customer in the store, a girl flicking through the CDs, it seemed quite full; for in a street of small shops this was the very smallest. And it was full of the busy sound of Gomez from big speakers – and Denny was here, a one-man crowd in himself.

‘It go all right then, my old mate?’

‘Fine.’

‘Shit.’

As well as this shop, Denny ran a specialist hi-fi business, and his own recording studio in the cellar of his house up towards Breinton. Lol had produced a couple of albums for him there: local bands, limited editions. Denny was keen to get him back on to the studio floor, but Lol wasn’t ready yet; the songs weren’t quite there – something still missing.

Denny said, ‘No fights, breakages, tears?’

‘Would you count tears of joy?’

‘Shit.’

Lol decided to keep quiet about the crow.

Denny twanged the balalaika and winced. ‘Don’t get yourself too comfy in that flat, mate. She changes like the wind, my little sister.’ He shook his bald head, and his gold-plated novelty earring swung like a tiny censer.

‘You hope.’ Lol couldn’t remember feeling exactly comfy anywhere.

‘Yeah,’ Denny said. ‘Don’t go back, that’s my philosophy. Never in life do you fucking well go back.’

Lol shrugged, helpless. ‘Whatever that place does to you, it has the opposite effect on her. You can’t get around it: she’s happy. She walks into the woods, up to the camp—’

‘Yeah… and all the time passing the place where her fucking father topped himself! What does that say to you?’

Denny sniffed hard and plucked twice at the balalaika’s strings, then laid it on the counter in disgust. ‘What use is a three-string shoebox on a stick? Kathy bought it from this poor, homeless busker, probably got the BMW parked round the corner.’

‘Soft-hearted,’ Lol said.

‘Soft in the head! I’ll tell you one thing: first sign of unusual behaviour, any hint of dope up there – she’s out. Kicking and screaming or…’ The CD ended and Denny lowered his voice. ‘Or however. Right?’

Lol nodded.

‘Long as we agree on that, mate,’ Denny said, as the girl customer turned around from the CD racks clutching a copy of Beth Orton’s Trailer Park, a slow delighted smile pushing her tongue into a corner of her mouth.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Lol Robinson, wow.’

‘Oh,’ Lol said. It seemed like ages since he’d seen her. He smiled, realizing how much he’d missed her even though sometimes, like Moon, she could be trouble. Well, not quite like Moon.

‘Hey, cool,’ the girl said. ‘And that same old Roswell sweatshirt. Is that the same one, or did you buy a set?’

‘Hello, Jane,’ Lol said. He wondered how much she’d overheard.

‘So, like who’s Kathy?’ Jane Watkins said. Dark mocking eyes under dark hair. A lot like her mother.

5 The Last Exorcist

THE BISHOP SMILED hard, talked fast, and wore purple as bishops do.

‘The Church, OK?’ His voice was public-school with the edges sanded off. ‘The Church is… hierarchical, conservative, full of rivalry, feuding, back-stabbing. And inherently incapable of ever getting anything bloody well done.’

The Bishop wore purple all over: a tracksuit and jogging gear. The Bishop jogged all over the city and its outskirts, usually in the early mornings and the evenings, covering, according to the Hereford Times, a minimum of thirty miles a week.

‘Now you’d think, wouldn’t you, that organizing an office in the Cathedral cloisters would be the easiest thing? Scores of cells and crannies and cubicles, but… all of them the Dean’s. And if the Dean says there isn’t an office to spare, I’m not even permitted to argue. Within the precincts of the Cathedral, even God bows to the Dean. So we shall have to look elsewhere. I’m so sorry, Merrily.’

‘It’s probably meant, Bishop.’

‘Mick,’ corrected the Bishop. ‘Meant? Oh it was meant, for sure. The bastard means to frustrate me. Who, after all, is the oldest member of his Chapter? Dobbs.’ The Bishop tossed the name out like junk-mail. ‘The old man’s ubiquitous, hovering silently like some dark, malign spectre. I’d like to… I want to exorcize Dobbs.’

‘Well, I feel very awkward about the whole thing.’ Merrily poured tea for them both.

‘Oh, why?’ The Bishop quizzically tilted his head, as though he really didn’t understand. He sugared his tea. ‘You know the very worst thing about Dobbs? He actually frightens people – imagine. You have what you are convinced is an unwelcome presence in your house, your nerves are shot to hell, you finally gather the courage – or the sheer desperation – to go to the Church for help. And what should arrive at your door but this weird, shambling creature dressed like an undertaker and mumbling at you like Poe’s doleful raven. Well, you’d rather hang on to the bloody ghost, wouldn’t you?’

The Bishop, Merrily had noticed, said ‘bloody’ rather a lot, but nothing stronger, always conscious of the parameters of his image as a cool Christian. She was determined to be neither overawed nor underawed by Mick Hunter this afternoon, neither bulldozed nor seduced. She wished he was more like Huw Owen, but men like Huw never ever got to be bishops.

‘Listen… Merrily…’ His voice dropping an octave – latenight DJ. ‘I realize how you must feel. If you were the kind of person who was utterly confident about it, I wouldn’t want you in this job.’

… not a fundamentalist, not a charismatic or a happy-clappy, you’ve no visible axe to grind and I can see why he was drawn to you. You’re in many ways almost exactly the kind of person we need in the trenches.

‘Do you know Huw Owen?’ she asked.

‘Only by reputation. Quite a vocal campaigner for the ordination of women long before it became fa… feasible.’