The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

Kington, it seemed, was away; to obtain the sacrament they’d need to disturb the verger.

But there was a limit to Bliss’s cooperation.

‘Merrily, are you like totally three sheets?’

‘No, I’m serious. It’s important.’

‘God knows, I’ve stuck me neck out a lorra times for you and, God knows, I’d do it again. And you’ve been good to me. But there are places I will not go. Not with the legendary atheism of the Ice Maiden and that bastard around with his little Handycam.’

‘He won’t be there, Frannie. Neither will Annie Howe. And if the lure of money wins out, and Ben Foley shows us the door, I’m ready to hold this service in a clearing in the woods.’

‘So I can tie her to a tree?’

‘Bloody hell, Frannie, I think she’d even be allowed out of prison to attend her granny’s funeral. Don’t you?’

‘Merrily.’ Bliss stood in front of the door to the lounge, as if she might suddenly charge it. ‘No.’

This was when Mumford came in to say there was a call for her, at the reception desk.

It was coming up to five-fifteen a.m. when Jane found Mum sitting by candlelight in Ben’s office under the etching of Sherlock Holmes’s most despicable moment. She looked — face it — shattered. The crow’s-feet seriously in evidence, her fingers dancing unevenly on the desktop.

‘Mum, why don’t you like go upstairs and get some rest?’

‘It’s OK, I need to… meditate.’

‘It’s not going to be easy, even I can see that. She still thinks she owns this place. She isn’t going to want to leave.’

‘Sorry, who?’

‘Jeez. Hattie Chancery?’

‘Oh.’ Mum smiled strangely. Fatigue. Halfway out of it.

‘Who was the call?’

‘Lol.’

‘He’s waited up for you? You don’t realize the kind of guy you’ve got there, do you?’

‘The picture’s forming, flower.’

‘What did he want? Is he all right?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘You’re not going to tell me about this, are you?’

‘Not now. But I will tell you. I will tell you everything. Bear with me, flower.’

Jane felt excluded, apprehensive, insecure. ‘There’s nothing wrong between you and Lol, is there?’

‘Absolutely not,’ Mum said. ‘Can you give me a few minutes to sort something out?’

Jane wandered away and came back quietly a couple of minutes later and didn’t go in, just stood outside the door. Expecting to overhear a phone call. Instead, listening in utter dismay to the sobbing and unable to work out whether this was relief or total despair.

The phone at reception called her away.

‘Jane?’

‘Irene! Haven’t you gone?’

‘I’m not going. I was on the Net for a couple of hours. Anyway, I decided not to go to Switzerland. It’s no problem. It means Lowri can take her mate from school and I can have pizzas instead of bloody turkey.’

‘Irene, this is—’

‘Shut up, Jane. You know who this Brigid is, don’t you?’

‘I…’

‘It’s bloody Brigid Parsons. That stuff’s from a nasty little site called veryverybadgirls.com, on which sick bastards all over the English-speaking world discuss their masochistic obsession with women who like to damage men or boys. Or kill them, in most cases. You know who Brigid Parsons is, don’t you?’

‘Er… yeah.’

‘And that’s not all,’ Eirion said. ‘That’s really not all. I do not like this, Jane.’

51 Of the Midnight

Merrily had never felt more grateful at being permitted to cry, let out this great vomit of emotion. Because there really was no way you could sit down and reason it all out, analyse your own reactions, from the initial blinding love and relief, through the horror and the pity, all the way down to the guilt and remorse and the residual dread that settled in your stomach like sour wine.

After attempting to repair her face with wipes from her shoulder bag, she’d come out of Ben’s office to find Jane waiting with a candle on a tin tray and the laptop she’d borrowed from Matthew Hawksley.

Jane had been on the phone to Eirion whom Merrily kind of thought had gone away for Christmas. And what was he doing up at this hour, anyway?

Nothing was normal.

Jane placed the laptop on the counter at reception and plugged it into the phone socket. Merrily stood and watched the savage colours rise on the flat screen.

www.veryverybadgirls.com

‘This isn’t the important one,’ Jane said, ‘but you need to see it first.’

Ben Foley looked as if he’d been holding his head under a cold tap to revive himself.

‘We should’ve talked.’ His swept-back hair was damp and lank, his long, thin face still glowing with towel friction in the haze of the Tilley lamp. ‘We should’ve talked ages ago. Now you think I’m some kind of conman and Jane hates me.’

‘My emotions change with the wind,’ Jane said.

They went into Ben’s office. He shut the door.

‘Before you say anything, Amber’s told me about… Brigid Parsons.’

‘You really didn’t know before?’ Merrily said.

‘I swear to you I didn’t. And I’ll tell you something else — if I had known I’d still have offered her the job.’

‘Of course you would. Probably for the same reasons she’d have turned it down if she thought there was any chance you knew. What I’m more interested in, however… How long have you known Antony Largo?’

‘Ha.’ He pulled out a chair. ‘You’d better sit down.’

Jane opened the laptop on the desk, brought up the first downloaded file: www.veryverybadgirls. He looked at it with distaste. ‘Is there a name for men like this?’

‘I’m sure we can think of one,’ Merrily said.

‘A name… or a man like this?’

‘Both?’ Jane brought up the second site. ‘OK,’ Merrily said. ‘This, as it happens, was a cross-reference or whatever they call it, from veryverybadgirls. Which was how Jane’s boyfriend found it — although I think it was the other way round. He’d already checked out Antony Largo when he found out Jane was working with him. Finding this.’

the official women of the midnight website

‘Ah,’ Ben said, with no great surprise.

‘You’ve seen it before?’