Midwinter of the Spirit

He took his hands from her throat.

‘I don’t believe in God,’ he said, ‘except as something created by man in what he liked to believe was his image. I don’t believe in Satan. I don’t believe in saints – or demons. I accept the psychological power of symbolism, of costume drama.’

She said, ‘You really don’t see it, do you?’ She squirmed to a sitting position, her back to the fountain. ‘You don’t see what you are!’

He recoiled slightly, puzzled.

‘You don’t realize… that a non-believer who manipulates—’ she struggled to her feet as she spoke, ‘… who manipulates the belief system to promote his own power and influence…’ she snatched the stone pot from the top of the fountain; it was heavier than she expected; she almost let it fall; ‘… is the most satanic… person of all.’

She was sobbing.

‘Put it down,’ the Bishop said.

She managed to raise the pot, with both hands, over her head. She backed on to the path.

Mick relaxed, spread his hands. ‘You going to throw that at me?’

He was about four feet away from her. If she threw it at him with all her strength, he would catch it easily. If she came close enough to try to hit him with it, he would simply take it away from her.

His eyes caught the full moon. His eyes were at their wildest; she sensed enjoyment, a need to be at all times very close to the edge.

He shrugged.

‘I was going to let you pray. I was going to let you kneel and pray. I accept the level of your faith. Very well, I’ll use that pot, if you like. You can kneel and pray and, while you’re talking to God, I can bring it down very hard, very cleanly, on the back of your head. Bargain?’

Her arms were aching, but she kept the pot raised, like an offering to the moon.

‘It distresses me that you have to die,’ Mick Hunter said. ‘The way it’s turned out with you, that leaves me sad. I do want you to know that I’m capable of feeling real distress.’

He walked towards her with his arms outstretched.

‘Merrily?’

There was nothing more to say. She arched her back, feeling a momentary acute pain in her spine, and hurled the stone pot into the great gothic diamond-paned window.

54 Friends in Dark Places

YOU COULD SEE him sliding it into her. It was quite dark, but the camera came in close, and there was the beam of a torch or lamp on their fuzzy, shadowed loins. Candles wavered out of focus, balls of light in the background. You could make out the glimmer of a gothic window. Beneath the woman’s buttocks was what might have been an altar-cloth.

‘Is that him?’ Annie Howe asked. ‘Is it as simple as this?’

They knew from his parents that, for a period during his time at Oxford, he’d had long hair – though it was not fashionable at the time – and also a beard. But there seemed to be no actual pictures of him from those days.

‘It could be him,’ Merrily said. ‘Then, again…’

‘You going to invite his wife to look at this?’ Huw wondered.

‘If necessary,’ Howe said. ‘I’m advised it may not be entirely politic at this stage to expose a bishop’s wife to pornography, and ask her if she recognizes her husband. She’s coming back this afternoon from her parents’ house in Gloucestershire. I’ve already spoken to her on the phone, and she didn’t seem as shocked as she might be. Any reason for that?’

‘It’s a marriage,’ Merrily said, ‘and maybe a political marriage, at that. Put it this way, their kids go to boarding school, and Val seems to spend a lot of time away from home.’

‘Interesting,’ Howe said.

Her office at headquarters was no surprise. Minimalist was the word; the TV and video looked like serious clutter. Merrily found this calming for once; there were no layers here. She wondered if she dared light a cigarette. Perhaps not. Beyond the big window, the sky was grey and calm: one of those un-Christmassy mild days which so often precede Christmas.

‘All right.’ Howe stopped Paul Sayer’s tape and rewound it. ‘Let’s look at it one more time.’

‘Actually,’ Lol said, ‘that woman… Could I look at the woman?’

Howe glanced at him with tilted head, and set the tape rolling again.

The woman on the possible-altar wore a blindfold and a gag, but the more times you watched the scene, the less it seemed like rape. Too smooth. She was ready, Merrily thought.

‘It’s Anna Purefoy.’ Lol leaned forward from the plastic chair next to Merrily’s.

‘Are you sure?’ Howe asked him. ‘This woman looks quite young. I’m told the film could be twenty years old. I thought we might be looking at the very early days of home-video, but my sergeant suggests it was transferred from something called Super Eight cine-film. Even so, Anna would have been in her late thirties, early forties.’

‘It’s her,’ Lol insisted.

‘Aye, they like to take care of themselves.’ Huw Owen was occupying a corner of Howe’s desk. He was the untidiest object in the immaculate room.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Owen?’

‘Secret of eternal youth, lass – sometimes you’d think they’d found it. Then they’ll go suddenly to seed, or become gross like Crowley. Drugs were no help, mind, in his case.’

Howe stood with her back to the window. She appeared, for some reason, uncharmed at being addressed as ‘lass’.

‘Well, it’s clear that this tape is never going to be usable in evidence, even if we could put our hands on the original. But it does prompt speculation. Would you like to speculate for us, Mr Owen?’

‘I get the feeling you were at university,’ Huw said. ‘Did they have any kind of occult society at your place?’

‘There were a hundred different societies, but I was never a joiner.’

‘I can imagine,’ Huw said. ‘Well, you look at most universities, you’ll find some kind of experimental mystical group – harmless enough in most cases, but one association leads to another.’

Merrily said, ‘I have a problem with that. I can’t see Mick having any interest at all in mysticism.’

‘Happen a reaction against his solid clergy family?’

‘His reaction, then, would be to avoid any kind of religious experience.’

‘My knowledge of theology is limited,’ Howe said, ‘but what we’ve just been watching is not what I would immediately think of as religious.’

‘No,’ Merrily said, ‘it’s plain sex. If you’re looking for serious motivating forces in Mick’s life, you’d have to put sex close to the top. He’d be nineteen or twenty then, newly liberated from the bosom of what was probably a less-than-liberal family. Suppose he thought he was getting involved with people who could, I don’t know, extend his experience in all kinds of interesting ways.’

‘Very astute, lass.’ Huw patted her shoulder. ‘As you’ve been finding out, clergy and the children of clergy are always fair game.’

‘Yes.’

‘So we’ve got a lad from a high-placed clergy family, up at Oxford. What was he reading?’

‘History,’ Howe said, ‘and politics.’

‘He could have become anything,’ Merrily said, ‘yet winds up following his father into the Church. You just can’t see him as a curate, somehow.’ She looked up at Howe. ‘It’s like imagining Annie here directing traffic.’

Howe scowled.

‘That’s interesting,’ Huw said. ‘Why did he do it? You really want me to develop a