The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

murderers who’ve been let back into society.’ Ben looked at Brigid, as if he still couldn’t absorb the idea of her as a serious killer, as anybody other than Natalie, his manager. ‘But most importantly, she’s out of the picture. This is the only interview anybody will ever get.’

Bliss said, ‘I know where you’re coming from, Merrily, but…’

Merrily looked up at Ben, saw his eyes go wide and still with sudden comprehension.

Bliss chewed his lip, then he said, ‘How successful is Mr Largo at present, Mr Foley?’

‘He… seemed to be on top. But then, in this business, nobody ever goes around telling people their careers are on the slide. I don’t really know where he is in the pecking order, I’ve been out of it for too long. Been out of it so long I trusted him. Thought he was a mate.’

‘But even if he was still successful,’ Merrily said, ‘something like this, that would still be the summit of his career…’

‘God, yes,’ Ben said. ‘Most independent producers would k—’ He swiped back his hair with both hands. ‘Figure of speech.’

Merrily wondered if Largo had heard Sebbie on the phone to Zelda Morgan from the bottom of the rocks, where he’d fallen. Probably not. Had he even thought of the risk that Sebbie’s fall could be ruled out as the cause of death and, if he had, might Sebbie still be alive? Or would he have taken a chance, anyway? She was a notorious convicted killer. Who was going to believe her denials?

She waited for Bliss to ask something, but Bliss was staring up at the window, chewing his lower lip again.

‘What would Largo’s state of mind be?’ she asked Ben Foley. ‘He’s waiting in his car, say at the entrance to the quarry. He’s seen Brigid going up there. He’s seen a Range Rover taking the same route. Perhaps he’s in the car with the headlights on, or perhaps he’s out there with the torch. But suddenly he sees a body tumbling down from the rocks through the snow. What’s he feeling? Shock? Incredulity?’

‘What do I say?’ Ben’s attempt at a smile was loose and nerveless. ‘Shock and incredulity aren’t in Antony’s repertoire.’

‘What, then?’

‘Seeing what looks like a murder happen before his eyes? A murder on a plate? A murder committed by a high-profile killer he’s been… lusting after — for reasons most of us wouldn’t like to contemplate — since he was a graduate trainee?’

‘In your own words, then, sir,’ Bliss said.

‘I would say barely controllable, very dark sexual… excitement.’

‘I see.’

‘Of course, the man has used me, lied to me, cut the ground from under my feet and left me humiliated, so I may be a tad prejudiced…’

‘Brigid,’ Bliss said, ‘when you came down from the rocks, what did Mr Dacre say to you?’

‘He didn’t say anything.’ Merrily was aware of Brigid drawing in a thin thread of a breath. ‘He was dead.’

‘All right.’ Frannie Bliss stood up. ‘I can’t let you go anywhere yet, Brigid, you realize that. But I won’t send you to Hereford. I’ll say we’ve had new snow. I’ll say something.’ He turned to Ben. ‘Where is he, Mr Foley?’

‘He’s gone, I think. Can’t have been too many minutes ago.’

‘Back to London?’

‘He said he’d phone me.’

‘When?’

‘Sometime. Actually, it may be sooner than sometime. After I copied his video discs to VHS, I, ah, put blank ones back in his case.’

‘Naughty. What’ve you done with the originals?’

‘They’re here. I may put them under a stone at the bottom of Hergest Pool for a thousand years.’

‘Sorry, sir?’

‘Local joke,’ Ben Foley said.

Bliss thought for a moment. ‘Sod it, let’s get the bugger stopped on the road and brought back. I want his clothes.’

They went out for air, Merrily and Brigid.

They stood at the highest point of the forecourt. The view was immense and blinding under a surprising glaze of gaseous early sun. No snow had come down since dawn.

‘Is it safe?’ Brigid was staring at one of the small farms lying under Hergest Ridge like a trinket fallen from a shelf, and Merrily realized that this must be The Nant, tilted into the hillside, half submerged in snow. ‘Is it safe to tell Clancy? Is it safe to tell Jeremy?’

You could see something crawling slowly towards it like a beetle, perhaps the loyal Danny Thomas going in his tractor to see to Jeremy’s animals.

‘I think Jeremy already knows.’ Merrily gazed over the snowy forestry to Hergest Ridge: thick white icing on an old fruit cake, rich and spicy, dark and bitter and soaked in alcohol. Where was the Hound? Out there, somewhere, or existing only in the collective consciousness of mid-Border people, a shadow on the retina of the mind’s eye?

‘Can I stay here?’ Brigid said. ‘If it…?’

‘Can you?’

‘It’s a challenge, isn’t it?’

‘Everywhere’s a challenge.’

She was thinking about something Gomer had said about Jeremy’s island of calm in a sea of noise and blood. She wondered what would happen now to Sebbie Dacre’s three farms, whether some other robber baron would come riding over the horizon in his Range Rover, unable to spot the symptoms of history until the disease had set in. It was important to guard the island.

Behind them, a shout went up.

‘That,’ Frannie Bliss said, ‘is outrageous. They think they’re a bloody law unto themselves, these bastards.’

‘It’s a remote area,’ Mumford said. ‘Always been self-sufficient. Half of them have got their own snowploughs.’

Merrily stood at the bottom of the steps, below the hotel porch, as Bliss followed Mumford down.

‘Who we looking at here, Andy?’

‘I’ll give you three names, boss. Berrows… Thomas… Parry.’

‘Damage?’

‘The van with Dacre’s body in it had a headlamp smashed. That’s the only police property. However—’

Merrily hurried over. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Your little friends,’ Bliss said, ‘decided, for reasons of their own, to reverse all the sterling work done to clear tons of snow from the bottom of the drive, thus allowing us all to return to comparative civilization.’

‘They… put the snow back?’

‘They put it back, Merrily, even better than nature had done it in the first place.’ Bliss’s voice acquired some heat energy. ‘They seem to have created an impacted wall of snow harder than the sides of the fucking Cresta Run. So that the first vehicles, thinking the road was clear, just piled into it.’

‘I think it was Berrows started it,’ Mumford said. ‘He was… in a bit of an emotional state. Especially after the girl came down. Then Thomas and Parry arrived in the tractor with a plough, and it escalated. They can go a bit mental, sometimes, Border people.’

‘Nick them,’ Bliss said grimly.

‘And the other bloke’s talking about legal action,’ Mumford said.

‘Sorry, Andy?’

‘The Scottish bloke.’

‘Scottish bloke.’

‘In the Shogun.’

‘I see.’