The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

at The Nant, while Brigid spent the rest of her life hardening a new prison skin. It was desperately sad. She wanted to put her head on the desk and weep. And then sleep.

‘Come on, what did she want from you?’ Bliss said. ‘It won’t go out of this office.’

‘She wanted me to adopt her daughter. More or less.’

‘Merrily, you’re kidding.’

‘Doesn’t want her in care, and she doesn’t have any suitable relatives. And she doesn’t want to burden Jeremy Berrows or put him in a difficult position.’

‘Bloody hell. I mean, you can’t blame her for trying. But… cheeky cow.’ He looked at her suspiciously as she pulled out her mobile. ‘You didn’t? Tell me you really didn’t.’

She wouldn’t look at him. ‘I’m supposed to be a Christian? What was I supposed to say?’

Bliss let out a lot of breath in a thin whistle. ‘For God’s sake, Merrily…’

He didn’t ask what else she’d agreed to.

As soon as Merrily was out of that office, she rang Lol again. No answer. This was starting to get worrying. She rang Hereford Police and asked for Annie Howe. They put her on hold and then came back and said they couldn’t find Howe, would she like to call back?

Merrily found a local phone book. Prosser. Would that be a business number or private? Would it come under the name of the shop? She peered at the small print. She needed reading glasses; this had been obvious for a while, but you tried to resist it.

‘Problem, vicar?’

‘Gomer. Sorry, I was looking for Jim Prosser’s number at the Eight till Late. I need to talk to Lol, that’s all, and the phone’s… not working. I need somebody to go round. I thought maybe Big Jim, as he gets up early to see to the papers.’

And as he was big.

‘Four two one three double six, vicar,’ Gomer said. ‘But he en’t usually up till five, and I knows for a fact they has their machine on all night.’

‘Oh.’ She shut the book hard.

‘Trouble back home?’

‘It’s… possible.’

‘Like to help, vicar, but it’s been comin’ down like a bugger out there.’

‘I know, Gomer, I wasn’t suggesting anything.’

‘Means we’d have to use Danny’s tractor, ’stead of the truck. Take a while, with the ole plough on, mind.’

Merrily blinked. ‘Is that feasible?’

‘Ten minutes to get down to The Nant, pick up the tractor. ’Less, o’ course, Danny comes straight yere. But then there’s Jeremy — can’t really leave the boy.’

‘You could… always bring him here. If he’d come.’ Merrily looked over at the two police on the door of the lounge where Brigid Parsons waited. Earlier, the WPC, Alma, had escorted her to the lavatory and back. ‘Gomer, are you sure about this? It’s not been this bad in years.’

‘And all them bad years, I was in it, waist-deep.’ Gomer beamed. There seemed to be more light in his glasses than in any of the bulbs around the walls.

‘OK.’ Merrily beckoned him towards the porch. ‘I may be worrying unnecessarily, but you need to know what this is about.’

Merrily stood for a moment, watching the tail lights of Gomer’s truck disappear. When she turned round, Jane was behind her in the porch.

‘I saw you go in. Is she OK?’

‘Not really. She’s confessed to killing Dacre.’

The kid’s face was threatening to crumble like biscuit. ‘She’s covering for somebody.’

‘I don’t think she is, I really don’t.’

‘But like… how could she think she could possibly get away with it?’

‘I’m not sure she even wanted to. She’s a fatalist.’

‘But who’d want to go back to… grey walls and bitterness and bitchiness and gay sex? And dope smuggled in to take you out of it. What a terrible, totally heartbreaking waste of…’

‘Two lives,’ Merrily said. ‘I didn’t really believe in them at first, but… You said “go back”.’

‘I… heard something.’

‘From Mrs Pollen?’

‘Who told you?’

‘Bliss.’

‘It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? Bloody devastating.’

‘Who else knows, flower?’

‘Amber. That’s it. I hope. Where’s Clancy?’

‘Still with Danny’s wife. And a policewoman.’

‘I’m glad she’s not here. I know it sounds terrible, and I know what she’s been through and what she must be going through now, but Clancy…’

‘Yeah, I know, hard going.’ The squares of glass all around them in the porch were glistening and opaque, like frosted ice-trays. ‘I also talked to Matthew Hawksley.’

‘I know. I’d already told them that you couldn’t be expected to take that on, without weeks of preparation and back-up.’

They walked back into the lobby. It was quiet now, and gloomy. Merrily noticed that three of the bulbs in the chandelier had gone out, and it hung there, gleaming faintly like one of the roast-chicken carcasses an old neighbour of her mother’s used to string up for the birds to peck at.

‘What do we do now?’ Jane said.

Merrily fingered her pectoral cross, nodded at the steps to the kitchen.

‘Tell them I’ll need another hour at least.’

Jane backed off. ‘You can’t…’

‘I can try.’

‘I told them you wouldn’t. I told them you’d need… I told them you’d even have to talk to the Bishop.’

‘I probably should, but I don’t see there being time.’

Jane backed away, staring at her. ‘You look knackered.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Mum?’

‘It’s because…’ Merrily took one of Jane’s hands, squeezed it. ‘Because Brigid asked me to do two things for her and this was… maybe the easiest.’

‘Mum, I don’t think she even believes in God.’

‘She believes in love. That’s got to be nearly as embarrassing.’

‘What was the other thing?’

‘We can talk about that later,’ Merrily said. ‘Can I borrow your room to prepare?’

‘You do not know what you’re taking on.’ Jane’s face was creased up with tiredness and concern. ‘You don’t know how far back this goes.’

‘Do you?’

‘All the time you go on at me about putting myself at risk, and you’re putting yourself in the path of something… unknowable—’

‘Jane—’

‘Because you don’t want to look uncaring and wimpish. The reason you’re not waking up the Bishop is you know what he’d say.’

‘Give me a break, OK?’ Merrily tried to pull the kid closer, but Jane dragged her hand away.

What could you say? She was probably right.

‘Is that, erm, Frank?’ Jane packed herself into a corner near the porch, with the mobile.