The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

Jane was expecting cops, or maybe Hardy and Matthews. She really didn’t care if Hardy had heard her talking about him.

‘He isn’t a phoney, believe me,’ Beth Pollen said. ‘But I didn’t say that I thought he could deal with it. A medium is simply what the word says. It’s about communication, rather than solutions.’

Amber turned to Jane. ‘I think she means that’s something for your mother.’

‘Oh.’

It was Ben Foley who sprang from the bottom step. ‘Amber, I’m sorry if I’m interrupting anything, but we’ll need another room.’

The man with Ben bestowed on Jane a gracious smile.

‘Jesus, I wouldnae like to do that journey again. Thank you, hen, you’ve got a hell of a nose for a developing situation.’

Nothing was ever simple, nothing ever painless.

Danny had been aware of diamond-bright blue-white vehicle lights behind them on the bypass, sticking with them after they turned off at Walton, using their tracks. But with snow fuzzed all over his wing mirror he couldn’t be sure what it was, and by the time they pulled up at his place the lights had vanished.

It was when Jeremy got down to open the farm gate for him that the little black Daihatsu appeared, coming the other way, down from Kinnerton. Danny had the idea it had been waiting in the lay-by, about a hundred yards back, to see who was in the tractor. Now it stopped, hugging the hedge, wedges of snow collapsing onto its roof as someone got out, a woman in a blue waterproof. Then Jeremy was springing back from the gates, and he was locked together with the woman in the tractor’s headlight beams.

And Danny was down from the cab, real fast, and in through the farm gate.

Greta had the door open before he reached it, standing there in a wash of yellow, and just for a moment it was like the first time he’d ever seen her, in a long floaty frock with little golden stars, like a dusty sunbeam.

‘You all right?’ Danny almost sobbing in relief.

Gret said, ‘I couldn’t do nothing, Danny. Had to let them in. Wasn’t nothing I could—’

‘What?’ And then Danny heard another engine up on the road and turned and saw the blue-white lights hard behind the tractor at the gate, heard the jolt of vehicle doors opening.

‘When they told me,’ Greta said, ‘about Sebbie Dacre…’

And then behind her, inside the house, a girl’s voice was screaming out, in real distress, ‘No! Mum, go away! Don’t come in!’ And there were sounds of pulling and scuffling, and this long, rending wail of despair.

Greta said, ‘You better—’

A copper came past her then, out of the front door, and Danny recognized his grey moustache: Cliff Morgan, sergeant.

‘Don’t get involved, Danny, eh?’ Cliff said.

But Danny ran back with the coppers to the open gate, where meshing headlights had turned the snow magnolia, and Jeremy and Natalie Craven were boxed in between the tractor and Jeremy’s old black Daihatsu, in the centre of all these beams of hard light, snow coming down on them, cops gathering in a wider circle, blocking the lane.

But they were separated from it. World of their own. Jeremy with his scarf wound around his neck, so she wouldn’t see what he’d done to hisself, holding her hand real tight. ‘Where you been?’ he kept saying. ‘Where you been?’

Natalie Craven pulled his head into the crease of her shoulder.

‘It’s all over,’ Natalie said, long hands in his fluffy hair. ‘All done now.’

42 Alleluia

He didn’t expect them to find her. That was clear. Dexter wasn’t subtle, and he didn’t expect them to find Alice.

They went up to the top of Old Barn Lane, back into Church Street and down to the Ox with its frosted front windows, a dim yellow glow visible from somewhere back in the pub.

‘They used to drink yere, when Jim was alive,’ Dexter said, as if they might see Alice peering in, thinking it was still 1979.

Dexter was going through the motions.

Lol wiped snow from his glasses with a forefinger. ‘How did she find out about your cousin?’

‘Eh?’

‘You said you thought it was the shock that might’ve made her wander off.’

‘I said that?’ Dexter sniffed and slumped off round the corner, where an alley led to public lavatories. Lol followed him. A tin-hatted lamp on a wrought-iron bracket turned snowflakes into falling sparks.

‘Check out the Women’s, you reckon?’ Dexter said.

‘It’s all locked up.’ Lol could see an iron gate, a chunky padlock.

‘Pity.’ Dexter finished off his lager, tossed the can to the end of the alley. He came over, leaned down into Lol’s face, his arms folded. ‘You really poking that little vicar?’

‘Not right now,’ Lol said.

‘Her go like Alleluia! when her comes?’ Dexter burst out laughing. ‘Just thought o’ that.’

‘Must remember to tell her,’ Lol said.

‘Alleluia when her comes.’ Dexter laughed up at the sky.

‘What do you reckon happened to him?’ Lol followed Dexter round to the front of the pub, where they stood under its open porch. ‘Just seems odd, a bloke falling in the road.’

‘Pissed, most likely,’ Dexter said.

‘He hadn’t given it up, then?’

‘Uh?’

‘Turning Christian?’

‘Christian.’ Dexter coughed and spat into the snow. ‘He never. He just said what he wanted ’em to think — Alice, and fuckin’ daft Dionne. I’ll tell you, he was a weak bastard, always gonner go wrong. Too weak to hold a job down. Not like me, Alice knew that. I was all she got, look. Me as looked out for her. Sisters got their own lives and their families up in Hereford. Laughing their tits off at Alice, all this ole church stuff. I was all she got, daft ole bitch. Couldn’t have no kids, look.’

‘How long you been helping at the chip shop?’

‘Helping? Cheeky cunt. When I’m in there, I’m running that place, look, reorganizin’. All these idle assistants, all this chitchat, we don’t need that. Get ’em served and on to the next one, don’t give ’em too many chips neither. Where them customers gonner go, they don’t like it? En’t like there’s competition. I says to ’em, these women, you do what I say, don’t gimme no stress, look, and we’ll get on. Where’s your beer?’

‘Must’ve left it on the table.’

‘No fuckin’ use there, is it, boy? Where you wanner go now?’

‘Ring the police?’

‘Waste o’ time. Cops is shit round yere. They en’t gonner look for an ole woman in this. What we’ll do, we’ll go round the ole bowling green and back up the square, see how it looks then. What’s your name, I ask you that?’

‘Lol.’

‘Kind o’ name’s that?’

‘A short one.’

‘Got a job, Lol?’