The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

start.’

‘Is that really necess—? I mean, can’t you—?’

‘Ben, you’ve smashed his face! I can’t believe you could—’

‘It was dark, I couldn’t see what I— For God’s sake, Amber, they were destroying it all. Everything was going so— And then these, these bloody shots, shaking all the glass in the windows. These bast— That’s illegal, that’s—’

The man on the ground squirmed, as if he was trying to get up, and then he slid back down the post like he was tied to it. He tried to speak, but his voice was like a thick soup. He started to choke.

Amber said, ‘Jane, leave me the torch and then go back to the house and tell Nat we need an ambulance, will you?’

‘Naw!’ The man was prising himself up, his back jammed against the fence post. ‘No abulath!’

Ben snatched the torch away from Jane, the way he’d grabbed the video camera, and held it up over his shoulder, the way police held their torches, gripping the lighted end, so they could use the thick stem as a club.

‘What’s he saying?’

‘He said no ambulance.’ Jane retched.

Amber said, ‘What are you going to do now, Ben — beat all his teeth out?’

‘You don’t understand.’ Ben shone the torch briefly round the clearing. ‘There’s two more of these bastards somewhere. And a gun. One of them’s got a gun.’

‘He’s…’ Jane backed away. ‘He’s right. They were at Jeremy’s. They were going to shoot Jeremy’s dog.’

‘Then tell Natalie to phone the police as well,’ Amber said. ‘Jane, go!’

‘Yes.’

Jane turned away, grateful for an excuse, and ran blindly across the clearing towards the wooden gate. Couldn’t believe what Ben had done. OK, he was furious at the shooters invading his land, and it had been building up for weeks, and he was frustrated and desperate for something to work out. But this was Ben Foley — artistic, funny, slightly camp. You thought you knew people. You thought you knew—

She was pulling at the gate when the hands came down on her shoulders.

20 Not About Foxes

‘So how did you find out, vicar?’ Alice Meek said. Resignation there, but no big surprise. ‘Who told you?’

Merrily shook her head. ‘Wouldn’t be fair. But it was more a question of finding out that there was something to find out. You know?’

‘You was guided.’ Alice put a mug of coffee in front of her. ‘See, Dexter, he thought you was just gonner lay your hands on him. He said he wouldn’t mind that. He come back afterwards, he says, that’s it, don’t wanner go n’more. I said, Dexter, I said, nothing comes easy, in this life. You want the Holy Spirit to pay you a visit in all His glory, I said, you gotter play your part, boy.’

Alice had a bungalow in a new close off Old Barn Lane, not a hundred yards from her chip shop. Alice’s kitchen was bright and shiny and full of chrome. Like a chip shop, in fact. It occurred to Merrily that, of all the women who gave up their time to clean the church, Alice was probably the oldest, the busiest and the richest.

And no kids. Dexter could be in for a sizeable bequest. Whatever Alice wanted, Dexter would have to listen.

‘What I was going to suggest, Alice…’ Nervously, Merrily sipped the coffee. It was, as she’d expected, the kind you made if you needed to work all night. ‘I mean, there might be something in this for more than Dexter.’

She hadn’t wanted to waste any time, to dwell too much on this before taking action. She’d walked straight down to Old Barn Lane and gone into the chip shop just as it was opening for the evening. Alice wasn’t working tonight, but the woman there, Sharon, had phoned Alice at home and Alice had told Sharon to send the vicar round directly.

‘En’t never had no kids, vicar, as you know. Used to babysit the others. Oldest sister, no kids, you spends half your nights babysitting — they think they’re doing you a favour.’ Alice sat herself down in a chrome-framed chair at the chrome-legged table. ‘What I’m saying, I knowed all of ’em, vicar, all them kids, better’n their own mothers in some ways, truth was known. Kids talks to the babysitter, see — when they wakes up in the night, when they’re tryin’ to put you off sending ’em to bed, they talks.’

‘So Dexter, Darrin, Roland…’

‘Babysitted all them boys for years. Never hardly had a Saturday night at home. Roland, he wasn’t like the others. Upsets me still to think about that child. He was… like he didn’t belong in that family. They’re — I’m saying this even though it’s my own family, but they’re a rough bunch, vicar, en’t got no social graces. En’t saying there’s no goodness at the heart of ’em, but you gotter dig deep sometimes. ’Cept with Roland. A true innocent, that child. He was that innocent it was like he didn’t belong in this world, which is a daft thing to say—’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘Like he never growed a skin, vicar. Sometimes, I wakes up in the night, years him, clear as day, sniffin’ his tears back. “Daddy was drunk”, he’d say. “Daddy’d come in drunk and he smelled bad.” Saturdays, see, Richie, he’d spend the whole afternoon in the pub — come back, trample on the kids’ toys and laugh hisself daft about it. Then they’d go out, him and my sister, Lisa, and I’d come round and babysit and clean up the mess and dry the tears. And talk to Roland. Darrin, he was his dad’s son, didn’t wanner talk, got bored easy. Roland, he wasn’t like neither of them. You think about what happened to him, and you think, why? Why was he put on this earth for that short time, for that to happen?’

‘You learned something from him,’ Merrily said.

‘Yes.’ Alice’s sharp little eyes filled up — a rarity, Merrily guessed.

‘What about Dexter’s family?’

‘That’s the middle sister, Kathleen. Her ex-husband, Mike, least he kept a job longer’n a week when they was together. None of ’em was bright, look, no get-up-and-go. You only gotter look at Dexter. I couldn’t look at Dexter for months, mind, after Roland died. I thought — God help me — why couldn’t it be him instead, or Darrin?’

‘Darrin’s… been in trouble?’

‘I never knows whether he’s in or out of prison, vicar, been in that many times. Beyond all redemption now, that boy. His dad, he was always destructive, but that was just clumsy and careless, through drink mostly — he never done nothing criminal. Most he ever got done for was urinatin’ in a public place — doorway of the Old House, dead centre of the city, all the shops still open, you imagine anybody that stupid? Thick as a beam-end, Richie. But Darrin — when his ma blamed Dexter for what happened to Roland, Darrin went and did damage on them, and Kath and Mike, they wouldn’t put the police on him ’cause they was ashamed of what Dexter done.’

Merrily sighed.

‘Problem with Dexter, look, he en’t got no charm, do he, vicar? Too fat, en’t too pretty to look at and not much of a way with him. Nothin’ about him, is there? Most people, they don’t know what he did — never did, even at the time; his name wasn’t in no papers nor nothin’, ’cause of his age. But he always reckons everybody knows and whatever he do they en’t gonner think no better of him, so he don’t even make the effort. But inside, it all builds up.’

‘Until he can’t breathe.’

It all added up. Except, perhaps, for the Requiem for Roland seventeen years dead. This was something she wouldn’t even have thought of before meeting Llewellyn Jeavons. It was unknown country. Embrace, Lew had said. Embrace the entire dysfunctional family? Was she big enough for this?