The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

‘Antony’s having one sent over to Stanner for me.’

‘Right, well, don’t get carried away with hand-held stuff. Unless you’ve got a lot of experience and really steady hands it looks awful. Unusable, right? Also, stick to auto at all times or you’ll just get in a mess.’

‘Won’t it look amateurish?’

‘The difference will probably be minimal, and Largo can get rid of any fluffs in the editing. And make sure your shots are long enough — remember you’re recording what might be a familiar scene to you for people who’ve never seen it before, so hang in there. Don’t pan unless it’s vital. Don’t get carried away with the zoom. And remember that the mike on the camera’s OK for ambient sound or when you’re tight, but… What’s the other mike like? Directional, or what?’

‘Well, it… I mean you can like point it. Look, when you said zoom…?’

‘Ration it severely. My advice is to pretend that every time you use the zoom it’s going to cost you a tenner.’

‘So the zoom… where is that exactly?’

‘Well, it’s… Oh, bloody hell,’ Eirion said, ‘suppose I just come over and show you.’

Jane fisted the air. ‘I love you so much, Irene.’

‘Prove it.’

‘Well, maybe,’ Jane said, low and sexy and exultant inside. ‘Maybe later.’

This greasy, low-wattage bulb over the door. Only a feeble light, coated with dust and cobweb and dead flies, but all light was pain.

Silence in here. The only sound was in his head: the buzzsaw of pain. Standing in the doorway, he was sick with the pain.

‘No. It’s a friend,’ Jeremy said. ‘A friend.’

Danny held on to the door frame. The girl in the straw didn’t move. Her hair was the same colour as the straw in the rancid butter light. She stared up at him and her eyes were full of fear and hate.

Jeremy said, ‘Oh Christ, they done that?’

Danny’s face and head were wet. He kept his hands away from it.

‘Gone?’ It was a tattered croak; he couldn’t believe the terror in his own voice. ‘All of ’em? You sure?’

On the flagged floor, a broken bale and the girl sprawled forward in the straw, looking up, covering the black and white dog with her body.

How much time had passed Danny didn’t know. His head felt like the time he’d been kicked by a horse. Jeremy was staring at him.

‘They was gonner shoot the dog, Danny. Clancy, she just hurled herself in front of ’em. Wasn’t no answer to that. They buggered off.’

‘They was gonner shoot the dog?’

‘What they hit you with?’

‘Butt of the gun, I reckon. Why the dog?’

‘Dunno.’ Jeremy was wearing baggy jeans and an old sweater with holes in it. He was quivering. ‘Dunno what they thought.’

‘Don’t you really, boy?’

‘I better get you an ambulance.’

‘Bugger off.’

‘Can you see out that eye?’

‘It missed the eye. You called the cops?’

‘You can’t drive home in that state,’ Jeremy said.

‘You called the police?’

‘No, I—’

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t want no police, Danny. It’d all get twisted round. You know how it is.’

‘This is Dacre, ennit?’

‘They never said, not really.’ Jeremy ran his hands through his sparse fair hair, his face all screwed up. ‘They never… He’ll admit to hiring them, but he’s gonner deny responsibility for how they done it.’

‘Done what?’

‘Shot the foxes.’

‘Foxes, balls. He’s the bloody hunt master. He don’t wanner see no foxes shot at night, or by day. He wants ’em all decently ripped in half by his hounds. The bloody Middle Marches Hunt looks like running out of foxes to chase, Sebbie’d have a couple crates of the buggers shipped over from the city, you know that.’

Danny leaned back against the door frame, breathing through his mouth. The effort of saying all that had left him feeling faint.

‘He en’t an easy man to deal with,’ Jeremy said.

‘He’s a total bastard of a man, Jeremy, we all know that.’

‘He phoned me earlier.’

‘Oh, did he?’

‘Said did I know what that feller Foley was doing over at Hergest. With another feller. And a girl.’

‘Why would you?’

‘Well, ’cause… ’cause Nat’lie, she d’work up at Stanner.’

‘Yeah, yeah. You tell him?’

‘Told him I didn’t know nothin’ about nothin’.’ Jeremy looked down at the girl. ‘You best get inside, Clancy, ’fore your mam gets in.’ He smiled at her. ‘Take the dog in with you. You’re gonner need some tea, Danny.’

‘No, I’ll get off home, ’fore Gret calls in the bloody Armed Response Unit. Give her a call for me, will you, boy? Say I tripped on the cattle grid but I’m all right now.’

In the end, it was past midnight when Danny made it home, and Jeremy had to take him in his Land Rover.

What had happened, those bastards had rammed the Justy out of the way with the bull bars on the Discovery, heaving it into the ditch. The driver’s door was stove in, and Danny didn’t give a lot for the sub- frame.

Bastards! Couldn’t believe they’d done that. Couldn’t believe any of this.

Knowing for a fact that if he tried to make a claim against them — even if he could find out their names — they’d deny the whole lot. Anyway, Danny avoided lawyers the same way you didn’t drink sheep-dip.

‘I en’t fully sure what this is about,’ he told Jeremy out on the bypass. ‘But far as I’m concerned it just got real personal.’

‘Leave it, eh, Danny. En’t nothing to be done.’

‘En’t nothin’—?’

‘I’ll pay for the damage.’

‘You bloody will not, boy!’

‘Happened on my ground. Me as called you out. And I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have rung you. I just didn’t want nothing to happen to the girl.’

‘Right,’ Danny said. ‘What’s going on, Jeremy?’

‘Nothing’s going on.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Just some shooting yobs from—’

‘Not the Welshies, you… that girl. And her mam.’ Danny was talking through the pain now, so he didn’t care what he said, long as he could get it out. ‘What’s the score there, Jeremy? Where’s it goin’, you and her? What’s that about?’

Jeremy said nothing.

‘All right, why’d them Welshies say it wasn’t your ground? Sebbie Dacre still think he’s entitled, is it?’

‘I wouldn’t know.’ Jeremy staring straight ahead, driving slow. ‘En’t his. En’t never gonner be his. That’s all I know. I was born there, I’ll die there.’