The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

‘Ah well,’ Antony said philosophically. ‘If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen.’

But Jane knew that he wouldn’t give up after all the trouble he’d taken to get here. After talking to her on the phone, he’d called up a guy who ran a film-unit resources business — called him up at home in the middle of the night and pestered him for something heavy and all-terrain within the hour. Whatever kind of money Antony had been waving around had brought him this monster Shogun, and then he’d done the journey the hard way, blasting up from London, through Gloucester and down to Ross. White-hellraiser.

‘Extremely nasty in places, but I just plugged on. Miles tae go before I sleep.’ He’d grinned. ‘Sleep? When I fetched up here, it was like I was already there — very dreamlike. Damn cops wouldnae even let me in at first.’

‘They thought you were a journalist,’ Ben had said, glancing at Amber, who was back at the stove, making soup and resenting all these people in her kitchen. ‘I think we’ll have to play all this by ear.’

Seeing Natalie brought in for questioning had unnerved Ben. Jane and Amber had agreed not to discuss what they’d learned from Beth Pollen, if only because Antony was back. OK, Women of the Midnight was TV history now, but if he found out Natalie’s real identity, nothing would stand in his way, like nothing.

The contemporary dynamic. The now drama.

‘I don’t know about the rest of you,’ Ben said, ‘but I’m just hoping this is some awful, awful mistake.’

‘Well,’ Antony said, ‘whoever the hell this Sebastian Dacre was, he’s given us a buzz we cannot ignore.’

‘Antony, everybody’s knackered, everybody’s fractious, everybody’s upset…’

‘Wrong,’ Antony said. ‘Everybody’s electrified.’

In semi-darkness, the dining room was like a derelict chapel — a dead fireplace at one end, at the other this lofty stained-glass window fogged with night and snow.

‘If you’re getting feelings of deja vu,’ Bliss said, ‘it doesn’t hold any nice memories for me, either. As you know.’

He meant the time in October — although to Merrily, it still felt as raw as last week — when he’d asked her to talk to a particular man facing a murder charge, and she’d been dreading it and relieved when it hadn’t come off. And then the situation had turned into a free-rolling tragedy, and the guilt and remorse had kicked in.

Which was why there was no way she could say no to this one, or even think no.

The door to the hall was open, and they were standing in a narrow alley of diffused light. Bliss had been waiting when she and Gomer came back into the hotel.

‘We’ll be outside at both ends, Merrily.’

‘Tell me again. Give me all the details.’

‘There are no details. We never got that far.’

‘Then give me the outline again.’

‘She admits killing Dacre — that’s it. She keeps saying, “I killed him, what else do you want?” I say, “I want to know why.” She says, “You wouldn’t understand.” And then, after a bit, she goes, “If you do a couple of things for me, I’ll think of a full explanation for what happened, I’ll write it all down, and I won’t go back on it. I won’t ask for a lawyer and I’ll plead guilty.” And I’m saying, “But, Brigid, it won’t be the truth, will it?”

‘And she’s saying, “Whenever did the truth matter to a copper?”

‘Words to that effect. People don’t have much of an opinion of the police any more, do they? Not even convicted murderers. After I tell her I don’t think she’s actually in the best position to start demanding deals, we sit there in complete silence. Like, normally, I can sit quietly for as long as you like if I’ve got an excuse to keep staring at a lovely woman. But this one was somehow in control. Probably a status thing: the nationally famous killer and the obscure provincial detective. After about two minutes, I’m going, “All right, what is it? What are you after?” ’

Mumford’s shape in the doorway reduced the light to a corona around him.

‘Sorry to disturb you, boss, it’s as we feared: no chance of getting her into headquarters in the next four, five hours. Until daylight, in fact. Apparently, seventeen roads’ve been closed. Mostly this end of the county.’

‘Shucks.’

‘We can’t even get the body away.’

‘Where is he?’

‘In the van on the car park.’

‘You better tell all that to Howe, then.’ Bliss didn’t sound too unhappy. He turned to Merrily. ‘The Ice Maiden’s finally discovered who Natalie is. And consequently has decided the interrogation requires a woman’s touch. Looks like you’ll have to do. She’d hate that, wouldn’t she?’

‘Frannie…’

‘Remind me to compliment the esteemed leader of Hereford Council on putting all our money into new shopping centres instead of winter maintenance. We have the lady to ourselves. Let’s dance the night away.’

‘What did she say when you asked her what she was after?’

‘She said, “I’d like to see my daughter, alone, as soon as you can arrange it, and I’d also like, at some point, to talk to a Church of England minister called the Reverend Merrily Watkins.” Naturally, I ask her why and naturally she declines to tell me. And when I write down this vicar’s name I ask her to spell it because, naturally, we’re unacquainted.’

‘Why do I still get the feeling you engineered this?’

‘It’s what she said, Merrily, I swear to God.’

‘She didn’t mention Jane?’

‘No, thankfully she didn’t mention Jane.’

‘It sounds as if she doesn’t know I’m here.’

‘Then let’s surprise her,’ Bliss said. ‘For some reason that escapes me, despite all my training, experience and natural flair some people seem to prefer to unburden themselves to you. I’m not proud. It could save time.’

‘And if she tells me things in strict confidence?’

‘Then you can tell her what a basically nice, understanding person I am and how much better she’d feel sharing it all with me — as distinct from the cold-hearted friggin’ bitch awaiting her over in Hereford, should she decide to hold out.’

Merrily looked at the connecting door to the lounge. ‘Can I make a call before I go in? I need to… make sure things are OK at home.’

‘We have all the time in the world,’ Bliss said.

The sound of the breathing was like a recording, amplified, as though the tomb was an echo chamber, and something had reanimated the ancient corpse in there.

Most of her upper body was fused to the broken side of the tomb. Her legs were buried, and a weight of snow had collected in her lap like ice cream heaped in a bowl.

Only an inscripted slab of stone, long ago dislodged, had protected her face from the snow, and in the torchlight it was as florid as Lol remembered. Her tongue was out, and there was a spittle ring around her mouth, a dab of froth in one corner of her lips, bubbling when the breath came through.

Alive, though.

Tough ole bat.

Lol knelt down in the snow, brushing and pulling it away with both hands, uncovering a pink, quilted coat done up on the wrong buttons.

Whispering, ‘Alice…?’

All she did by way of reply was to go on breathing through her mouth, the air siphoned out in the gap alongside her protruding tongue.

Even her breath seemed cold.

She’d had a stroke. He’d seen this before — in one of the day rooms at the psychiatric hospital, a woman with schizophrenia having a stroke in an armchair in front of the TV, and her breathing filling the room. He remembered another patient going to turn up the telly.