The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

mud.

The track had curved to the left and this big motor was blocking the whole of it like an outsize bull. No lights. Without his own headlamps, Danny would’ve been up the back of it, no question.

The Justy slurped and stalled, leaving Danny slumped over the wheel, breathing heavy. Must’ve stayed there about half a minute, getting hisself together, switching his lights off, before pushing his hair back under his woolly hat and climbing shakily out of the Justy. Close? Shit.

Danny staggered up to the big motor. It was a Discovery, metallic light green, with camouflage effects sprayed on. He hated this paramilitary crap, despised these bastards already. Still, he made good and sure there was nobody inside the Discovery before setting off to walk the last fifty or so yards to the buildings, keeping to the narrow grass verge beside the ditch, aware that he’d left the Justy blocking the way out.

Too bad. He was still shaking. In the country, the worst accidents happened on farms.

In his jolted-up state, he’d forgotten to bring a torch with him, but the place looked to be well lit up already. The track ended in the farmyard, with the black and white house to the left and the old stone barn on the right, and one wall of the barn looked floodlit like an old church.

The big bay doors were shut, but Danny noticed that the small one to the side was ajar and this was where most of the light was, and there were shadows moving, and he stood there on the edge of the yard, screwing up his eyes to try and make out what was there. Then calling out, in a friendly kind of way, ‘Hello there!’

This was just before the light went out and he heard footsteps coming at him from three directions, making him instinctively start whirling round, clawing at the blackness.

When the light came back on a few seconds later, it was full in his eyes, and he was near flattened by the violence of it.

Eirion’s voice, in the phone, said, ‘You total, insufferable bitch. How could you do this to me?’

Jane carried on unwrapping the package, the mobile wedged between ear and shoulder. She was smiling. She’d dug the big Jiffy bag out of her overnight case and brought it over to the bed. Mustn’t drop it on the floor, an expensive and complex piece of equipment like this.

‘Jane, you still—?’

‘Sure.’ She’d kept the overnight bag between her knees all the time she and Mum were eating, then said she’d just have to whizz upstairs to the apartment to freshen up and unpack.

‘Well?’ Eirion said.

‘Look, it’s the way it goes, sunshine. Nobody compelled you to go to the Alps with your creepy stepmother and a few corrupt members of the Welsh Assembly and their bimbos. I think it was John Lennon who said, “Life is what happens to other people while you’re busy shooting the piste with a bunch of inconsequential tossers.” Right, here we are…’

Jane released the camcorder from the bubblewrap and lay back on her bed with the phone.

‘I can’t stand it,’ Eirion said. ‘What’s it look like? What sort is it?’

‘Well, it’s a Sony.’ Jane held the camcorder over her face with one hand. She was going to have to cool this a little, or he wouldn’t play ball. ‘It says one-fifty and some letters. It’s kind of dinky.’

‘Sounds like the kind they hand out to people doing these video-diary pieces. The punter sets it up on a tripod in his room and whispers intimate thoughts at it. If it gets broken it doesn’t make a major hole in the budget. Has it got one of those flaps you unfold, like a wing, and you can see the picture?’

‘Hang on.’ Jane sat up. ‘Yep, there’s a flap. Can’t see anything in it.’

‘That’s probably because it’s not switched on. Sockets for external mike?’

‘Could be. Couple of those little pinhole things. In fact, there’s an actual microphone as well, separate. It’s longer than the camera.’

Eirion moaned.

‘Piece of crap, then, is it, Irene?’

‘No.’ Eirion sighed. ‘It’s a tidy bit of kit, for the money, and it’ll get very credible results on automatic setting. Jane, I’m gutted.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m sorry. I truly wish you were going to be there. You’d probably get much better stuff than me.’

‘Are you trying to make it worse? What’s he like?’

‘Antony? He’s quite funny. Very cynical. At first, you get the feeling he really couldn’t give a toss. But then he latches on to something, and you can see this steely intensity in his eyes. Of course I don’t know these guys like you do, and I didn’t realize he was that famous.’

‘He’s not famous, Jane. Pro doco guys are seldom famous. He’s respected, is what counts. Which is what brings the work in. And I mean, why would a guy… why would a guy of his stature allow an evil little bimbo like you to… shoot for television? ’

They had him backed up against the farmhouse wall, battering him with white light.

‘… The fuck are you?’

Danny didn’t respond. Stood there with his head bent away from the raging light, knowing that they had him wedged in. Somebody pulled off his hat and his hair came down over his face, near-wringing with cold sweat.

‘Looks like one of them fuckin’ travellers,’ another voice said — higher, younger. Danny placed the accent in the Valleys, somewhere down where there used to be coal mines and jobs. A good fifty miles from local, anyway.

It was them.

The light veered away from him, and he looked down and saw the lamp — one of them items you could send for out of the glossy catalogues that dropped out of local papers: ten million kilowatts, guaranteed to throw a beam halfway to Rhayader.

‘Assed you a question, mun.’ Hot, soupy breath in his face. ‘Assed you a fuckin’ question!’

‘What I am,’ Danny said through his clenched teeth, ‘is a feller got hisself invited yere by the owner. Unlike some bastards.’

‘Bullshit!’ He’s just a fuckin’ tenant, is all. Scum, he is.’

It was blasted into his face along with some spit. The light hit him again like a big white fist, just giving him time, before he had to shut his eyes against it, to see two blokes in army-looking camouflage gear, one with the lamp, the other with something that was likely a rifle with a telescopic sight.

‘Try again,’ the Welshie said.

‘I’m a neighbour. Who’re you?’

‘On your own?’

‘You’ll mabbe find out just now,’ Danny said, and cried out as somebody grabbed his hair and hauled his head back, and they shone the light directly into his eyes, and when he shut them the night turned bright orange like the logs in his stove.

‘Danny!’ Jeremy. His voice coming from above, probably an open window.

‘Call the cops, Jeremy,’ Danny said, surprised how calm he sounded, still held by his hair with his eyes tight shut.

From behind, another bloke said, ‘OK, he’s on his own.’ Then they let go of Danny’s hair, and he couldn’t feel the heat from the lamp any more, and he risked opening his eyes a fraction.

The first thing he saw was the gun.

‘Oh shit,’ Danny said.

It wasn’t what he was expecting. It had a shortish single barrel and a skeleton butt, like the end of a crutch.

‘Look,’ he said, nervous as hell now, ‘what’s this about?’ If you didn’t know better, you might figure these blokes for the SAS on some night exercise. All the instructions shouted, rasped out, like soldiers and armed police did on TV. A performance, designed to put the shits up you.

And it was working. No bugger in these parts had a gun like that, not even—

Danny said, ‘Sebbie Dacre sent you, right?’

‘Shut the fuck up.’

‘Nathan!’ The younger voice, from a few yards away. ‘I can year the bastard movin’ about! Fetch the fuckin’